Post by Sheng on Jan 6, 2024 0:19:11 GMT
Sheng [SD | VA]
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03/02/2023 5:52 PM
35:40 Arkehold Standard Time. Outer-System Monitoring Station "Deadlock-9"
The Station Supervisor was currently pouring a packet of "Petro-Sip: Enhanced Flavour!" leading brand beverage into a mug filled with water as a Television playing the news hummed in the background, the headline reading "Herald Intelligence veto's Bill 8C-X despite pleas from FPC!" He pushed his foot down on a trashcan pedal and the lid swung up, promptly dropping the empty foil packet into it and lifting his foot as he grabbed a stir-stick and started stirring the contents of the mug. After the drink was properly mixed he picked it up and walked back to his desk, placing the mug onto it and was about to sit down before he heard the distinct clank of footsteps approaching him. He turned around curiously and saw his assistant wave at him and then sit down next to him, he waved back and sat down in his own seat. The lid to his intake port popped open with a click and he took a sip of the liquid, his processors scanning it and then simulating the correct flavors. He let out a mechanic sigh before spinning his chair around to face his assistant who promptly said: "Seen the news?" He nodded and responded with: "I have. I must say this I wasn't expecting, the feds have been trying to push the eight series for nearly two star-cycles now. For the Herald to veto it... it's odd, you'd think of all the councilors to veto the bill Herald would be the last. Especially after Advisor Caramet practically removed half of the contents since the last disapproval." The assistant shrugged before she leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs, idly looking at the computer on his desk. The computer was one of the newer "IX-Office" series and displayed a sensor readout of the entire grid-square. She continued speaking: "Especially after the latest protests in Varis City, what was the turnout again? Like two hundred thousand? I mean I know that protests are usually ignored by the Council but come on, that's one of the biggest we've had in the past decade. Surely that'd push them to at least make a compromise? I mean all the others were fine with approving the bill, it was the closest it had ever gotten to implementation." The supervisor shook his head before spinning his chair back around to look at the screen, pulling the keyboard and mouse out and clicking on the annoyingly loud mechanical keyboard a few times to show a live system map. It was nothing special of course, 6 rocky planets and a couple of moons. New Archon slowly circling around Arkehold, the system's star. Every so often there'd be a little blip showing something entering the system or an occasional "NDF" [No Data Found] alert, which was caused by the station's immensely powerful sensors glancing the System Defence Grid's stealth plating for a fraction of a second. He tapped his fingers on the keyboard again and the grid-square view re-appeared. He then clicked on the "Total Overview" tab to adjust the readout to show all incoming and departing objects. His Assistant continued to blabber on but in truth he wasn't really paying attention anymore, just responding with the occasional "oh really? wow" and eventually she grew bored and walked off to go back to work. The supervisor continued to stare at the screen, under the assumption that this would be just another boring day of staring at the border-monitor system and seeing nothing.
Cpt_Waterbubble
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03/02/2023 6:20 PM
Meanwhile, somewhere much further away, the warp navigation computer of a freshly made ship received its first orders. Within a fraction of a second it aligned the ship and fired the drive, kicking the vessel into flight for the first time... tick tick tick halt And it kicked the drive again, this time in reverse. And suddenly, it put a bullethole into the sky. Whatever parts of the station were sensitive to gravitational disturbances had just been flashbanged, the cameras quite literally reporting back an actual bullethole in spacetime itself, as if it had shattered like glass, loose shards of distored space sent flying... And at the center of the impact, lay the projectile that caused it, easily several kilometres in size. Initially hard to identify, as soon as most of the smaller shards had dissipated back into normal reality the strange... object could be identified as something that... vaguely resembled a starship. Its design was completely alien, weirdly round and organic, but built in the kind of way that arises in methods of structural optimization that only a machine intelligence could figure out. It showed almost no metal parts, instead seemingly being made, at least on the outside, entirely of ceramics and rubber with only the tiniest of metallic inlays seemingly added more as decoration than functional parts, more precise looks at the sensor revealing it to also have completely nonsensical electromagnetic fields, heat distribution and radio emissions... They didn't get more time to look at it before it suddenly made an abrupt turn to face the station, casually pulling so many g's in the process that there was no way they had organic life onboard that could have survived that, then opened several ports on its sides, and deployed several large arrays of golden antennae. They were glittering with blue and yellow lights, and they were moving not like machinery, but like parts of an animal, abruptly and instinctively rather than on a sensible pre-made path... Adding to that, around the edges of the ports and below the antennae, something else was visible, a seemingly soft, vibrantly dark-blue mass of... something that can only be described as flesh... whatever this thing was, it made no sense. As the antennae kept flaring out, two things hapenned. First, the station received a comms ping from it... they were being hailed, and somehow this thing knew how to do so already. Second, between some of the really long antennae, a strange field was forming, purely black like some kind of light-catching membrane...
March 6, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
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03/06/2023 10:17 AM
The Supervisor continued to tiredly watch the computer screen, occasionally switching tabs when all of a sudden a rapid clicking could be heard. He lifted his head and looked around to spot the source of the sound before he saw one of the sensor printers rapidly printing out sensor readings. He stood up and walked over, looking at what it was printing and shook his head in confusion. He turned his head to call his assistant over when he heard another machine start to click, and then another… And another, and another, they all started rapidly clicking. He rushed over and examined the readings it was printing out, muttering in disbelief before soon all of the machines were printing out strange readings. He shouted for his assistant who ran over and stared at the mass of paper slowly falling to the ground in shock, she stood there for a second before running over to the wall and flipping up a plastic case that was over an orange button. Slamming her metallic fist down on the button as rotating orange lights turned on and a warning siren started blaring. Shutters slammed down over all exterior windows and the supervisor ran back over to his computer and looked at the sector view, seeing that a new object had appeared. He rapidly clicked on his keyboard and brought up a visual view on one of the exterior cameras and stared at the massive vessel that had appeared. The two of them looked at it in horror before the assistant ran over the a phone on the wall, yanking it off and pressing several buttons before she shouted into it: “This is monitoring station Deadlock-9, reporting an instance of event zero, zero, one. Repeat this is monitoring station Deadlock-9 reporting an instance of event zero, zero, one.” —————————— The Captain of the Arbalest, a newly renovated Arkadia Class Battlecruiser was sitting down in the strategic room before one of the bridge crewmen burst in and held up a piece of paper and shouted: “An instance of a double zero event has just been reported in the outer sector! Class one!” The Captain jumped from his chair and ran over to him, snatching the report from his hands and giving it a read over before seeing the attached image. He handed the report back to the crewman and said: “Set co-ordinates for intercept, alert situation command. Send a priority message to the Forsaken and the Retribution to pull up from orbit to join us.” They both left the room and proceeded to the main bridge, the crewman splitting off to relay the Captain’s orders. As the Captain approached the main console the warning of an imminent jump was broadcasted over the intercom. He nodded to the Chief Engineer and they pushed a button and with a lurch the ship entered FTL. ————————— At the station the Supervisor and his assistant were staring at the visual feed, it was obvious that it was Alien. I mean look at it, no Federal entity made that. He then saw three more blips flicker then appear on the grid view and on the visual feed three Federal Navy ships appeared. An Arkadia class and two Horizon class, stopping a respectable distance away from the ship. This was when the Supervisor had noticed they’d received a transmission, promptly clicking on his mouse to play it while also sending it to the three newly arrived ships.
Cpt_Waterbubble
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03/06/2023 10:50 AM
As they played the recording, they first got garbled audio for a second, then uninterpretable tones and chords, then, in a strange voice, clearly robotic but weirdly harmonic and organic, and backed with strange cords behind the talking, and just a slight, hard-to-place accent... "-slators calibrated..." a brief pause... "To whomever may be getting this message... this is primary command intelligence Iuno." Another pause, and garbled chords, two different "voices" as it seems "Right, of the Capulin Astral Cognate. And, please excuse our rather forceful method of arrival, we mean you no harm, our drives just do that. This vessel is intended for long-range reconissance and diplomatic contact, it is on a peaceful mission of first contact with another faction, and if the data I got is correct, one that is rather similar to mine." ... "I have no idea if you're even getting this, please hail in return once you get this, I've not gotten to test this class of vessel in the field yet, we set off the moment it was done building." ----------------------------- Somewhere deep inside the ship, Iuno was walking in circles in the command rooms, nervous as all hell, trying his best to give a good impression of being able to hold speeches for first contact. He wasn't, wasn't made for it and never good at it. But Valence hasn't cut him off yet, so he might as well keep trying. ----------------------------- More areas of the ship were still unfolding, exposing more arrays of densely packed golden antennae blinking with blue and yellow lights, strange glowing glass hemispheres and geometric assemblies of incomprehensible components, and some areas directly exposing more of the odd blue... flesh that was meshed with the internal components of the ship. And it was all perfectly colour-coordinated too, white ceramic, black rubber, blue flesh, gold details, blue and yellow lights... White, black, blue and yellow, everything. Some pieces of the ship seemed to not even be connected to it, instead suspended by what they could only hope was electromagnetic trickery just above it. And lastly, one thing that seemed concerning... there were exposed walkways integrated into the hull and the various layers beneath it, hard to see but they were there, there were roughly people-sized specks of white and black crawling around on them, but the ship had no airlocks... quite the opposite. A few walkways were positioned just right for them to see right into the ship. It wasn't pressurized, it wasn't even closed to the outside. ----------------------------- The ship had seemingly completed deploying its components with that, and was now giving brief pulses of RCS in various directions to stay in position facing the station They could see the geometry of the ship shifting in places, engine pods and sensor clusters angling around, twitching into new positions, entire sections of the ship slowly getting displaced to shift the mass of the ship ever-so-slightly to help it maneuver, in a confusingly well-coordinated and optimized dance of what-might-be machinery. They would be able to learn something else from that... the exhaust of their thrusters was... just as absurd as the rest of the vessel. It was measured as being pure iron, travelling at a good 50% the speed of light - no doubt these were fusion engines, but the exhaust was almost impossibly cold as well... At least that explained how it was moving so rapidly. And despite of it clearly having noticed the incomping ships, its sensors and antennae occasionally facing them, it was making no move to reposition or prepare for defending itself. (edited)
Sheng [SD | VA]
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03/06/2023 5:22 PM
The Citadel, New Archon, 2 hours later...
The Servitor nodded to the two armoured guards and they inserted two keycards into corresponding black slots and the massive pristine marble black doors slowly opened. The room inside completely plunged in darkness, they walked in. Their feet clacking against the marble floor as they walked through the room, coming to a stop some time later. They spoke in quite a formal tone: "Councilors, a priority alert has been sent from a responding team in the outer system. Another extrasolar race has initiated first contact. As procedure dictates, the Captain of the lead vessel has requested your presence to adequately respond to this diplomatic envoy. They've introduced themselves as Primary Command Intelligence Iuno of the Capulin Astral Cognate. Do you.. Accept?" -------------------- The Captain waited in the situation room, they had sent an official summons to the Citadel and now awaited a response. The holo-table suddenly lit up and seven symbols appeared before seven drastically different synthetic voices spoke as one: "The Council has determined that this event warrants our appearance, send a request for a live communication to the offending ship and we shall take over from there." The Captain bowed his head and whispered his obedience, the holo-table turning back off. He stood up and swiftly left the room, motioning to one of the crewman and relaying the Councils instructions. The Crewman promptly sent a hail to the intruding ship and the Council introduced themselves as one: "Greetings, we are the Council of Seven. We are the commanding intellects of the Second Dawn, allow us each to introduce ourselves." The Council then stopped speaking in unison and each introduced themselves: Archon-1, Strategic Intelligence of the Second Dawn. Archon-2, Scientific Intelligence of the Second Dawn. Archon-3, Economic Intelligence of the Second Dawn. Archon-4, Artistic Intelligence of the Second Dawn. Archon-5, Social Intelligence of the Second Dawn. Archon-6, Logistic Intelligence of the Second Dawn. Archon-7, Herald Intelligence of the Second Dawn. As the ship began to adjust itself the Reborn personnel seemed to calm slightly, accompanied by the fact that the ship had yet to take any hostile action. But they were still wary, after all a completely foreign ship had suddenly entered their space unannounced claiming they'd learned off of them from exterior sources. This was obviously assumed to be true but the Second Dawn was still new to the game and thus were still a bit unnerved by such occurrences.
March 7, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
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03/07/2023 3:41 AM
Over the waiting time, the ship turned to face the local star, its behaviour slowly calmed down, its components moving less and less as it got settled into position, only occasionally correcting position when it was drifting "too far"... Which seemed to be distances to small in comparasion to the size of the vessel that it was impressive they were even able to correct for them. The massive black wings of the ship were now in full view of the star, and despite there being nothing between the antennae projecting the strange black membrane, absolutely no light was visible through them... No doubt this was some kind of solar collector. After about one hour had passed, a brief puff of gas was seen being ejected from several pairs of maneuvering jets and, what they assumed to be, the as-of-now unused main engines of the ship, identified to have been pure hydrogen at very high temperatures, as well as several jets of incredibly hot iron plasma from unidentified ports in the middle-rear and top of the ship. ------------------------------------- As it got the message, a lot of its antennae rapidly flicked to face the source of the message, and the ship swung around to face its origin... "Greetings, I'm glad to have made contact. And that the Translators do work both ways. As you may have been informed, We are Primary Command intelligence Iuno, and if my dearie decides to want to speak, Secondary Command Intelligence Valence..." Very brief pause, interjected again by that menacingly bassy assortment of chords, responded to by another one which was propably Iuno judging by the pitch of voice. "Or rather, localized fragments of the greater us, running on just this ship. We have come here in hopes of diplomatic contact and possible cooperation, and seeing as I'm talking to a fellow cluster of purposed artificial minds, which to my knowledge has similar goals to our own, I'm sure there's... something mutually beneficial to find." The Council may also be able to pick up on something no ordinary listener could, the unnoticeably very brief delays, the reason for his slight odd accent sometimes dragging out letters slightly too long, and the barely noticeable audio glitches easily identified as him trying to stall his words to be able to build a sentence fast enough to not have to pause, and not really being able to do so fast enough, especially once he got about halfway through the message. Not to mention, he was audibly, even if trying to hide it, nervous and uncertain of his words being the right ones. -------------------------------------- About halfway through his message the ship also began to expose yet more odd components, mainly a second pair of wings, this time bright white ones behind the black ones, easily identified as radiators judging by how incredibly hot they were, but... obviously organic in nature, consisting of several stretchy membranes, with bloodvessel-looking conduits integrated into them that seemed to be carrying the hot coolant. Several more traditional ceramic heatsinks and other minor radiators were also deployed/exposed all over the vessel. (edited)
March 9, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
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03/09/2023 12:25 PM
The Captain turned to his left and looked at a crewman sat down at a console while the foreign AI talked and nodded. The crewman gave a thumbs up in response and pulled a phone off of the console and hit a few buttons on a numpad next to it before holding it up to his head and saying: “Authorization given, begin interdiction.” The Crewman then placed the phone back down onto the hook and turned back to the Captain and nodded. The Captain then turned towards an Officer stood behind three crewman each staring at their respective consoles and nodded to that Officer. They gave a quick salute in response and then started pointing to various buttons and displays on the consoles. —————————— An Engineer hung their phone back onto it’s hook and turned to the other engineers and gave a thumbs up. They nodded in response and jogged towards a storage unit labeled “S-Class fuel rod storage” and opened it, revealing several thick half-metre long rods of a glowing blue material encased in thick metal. They each grabbed one and then closed the storage door, proceeding to a round machine in the centre with four slots on the top. They each nodded to each-other before raising the Sinarium fuel rods and slowly lowering them into the slots, once each rod was secured a thick metal cap was placed over it and screwed in. The Engineer near the phone watched this and then when all four rods were secured they reached over to three levers on the wall, grabbing ahold of one and pushing it up. When the first lever was flicked all the slights flicked off briefly with a thick clunk before coming back on in an orange colour. When the second lever was flicked up the central machine hissed before slowly beginning to descend into the floor. When the third lever was flicked a low, absurdly loud hum filled the room and the space around them started to ripple slightly. The engineer pulled the phone back off and reported that the interdictor had been activated and that the interdiction field was beginning expansion. —————————— The Combat Control Centre was dead silent. A crewman was stood up listening to instructions through another phone before they hooked it back on and shouted: “Orders confirmed! Move to condition one!” And suddenly the room was buzzing with activity, various voices started shouting information and similar whilst a variety of switches and buttons were flipped and pressed. After a second a low warning alarm sounded once and the lights flicked from orange to a dark red, the lockers to various personal defence weapons unlocking simultaneously with a click. —————————— The barrels to the various ship’s titanic mass driver turrets slowly extended themselves to the active position and then slowly turned themselves to face towards the foreign ship and, the ships that had them anyway, anti-ship missile silos snapped open to prepare for a possible launch. Meanwhile Archon-1 continued and said to the foreign ship: “We do not take kindly to unannounced intrusions into our core territory, I’m afraid you’re going to have to be much more specific as to the reasoning for your presence here.” (edited)
Cpt_Waterbubble
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03/09/2023 12:58 PM
The moment the interdictor field went up, they knew that it worked, as some kind of gravitational shockave rippled out from the rear of the ship, backwards, and took the inside of one of the main thruster arrays along with it... which looked pretty gruesome seeing that the ship was partly organic. Cognate warp technology relied a lot on field tensioning. Basically, warp drives that work like springs that have to be wound up. And interdicting the drive made that spring snap instantly, dumping all of its gravitational energy into an uncontrolled field. Most of the sections of the ship around the various drive modules were pretty crunched on the inside, all of the modules were irreparably broken, and a lot of the engineering crew had propably been turned into pulp. Luckily the drive had not had much time to recharge, so most of the damage was only internal, and only to the warp systems... ------------------------------- Now sounding much more nervous, Iuno tries to start a reply, but only gets out an "I HRGKH-", followed by semi-distant clattering of ceramic and plastic parts hitting the floor, as the second voice finally spoke in a language the understood. It sounded similar to Iuno in terms of structure, same weird harmony, but with a different accent and way lower in tone, as well as having a lot less... audible emotion. It sounded far more robotic and serious than Iuno. 'Our reasoning is as we have presented it. Our kind has only recently been able to contact the greater galactic community and is searching for posible allies. While I do understand your distrust at my partners rather forceful way of entry, I must still implore you to consider what we say as true. We have no better way of contacting other factions at this time, as our main communications net hasn't been able to be made fully compatible with the Ancnet, due to us only recently learning of its existence. Our reason for visiting your kind in specific is also as presented, as per our analysis your goals are aligned with ours. Optimization, improvement, acquisition of knowledge. To your consideration stands what we can provide: exhange of knowledge if equal, of processed advanced material products and components such as you see in our ship even at great deficits on our side, assembled technology you may not have access to also at our deficit. We seek, above all in our current state, to have some form of mutual reassurance of safety in our nations relative infancy, and we are willing to provide whatever is needed to earn your trust.' ... 'And we will require your permission to call a rescue vessel, as you have unwantingly destroyed our hammerdrive.' distantly, Iuno "I should not have left that thing charging..." quieter, as if turned away from the imaginary microphone 'No, you should not have.', audibly disappointed Back at normal volume, 'I hope you will consider this opportunity. If you do decide to destroy this vessel we will not see it as a hostile action.' ------------------------------- Surprisingly, the ship itself didn't react much to having weapons aimed at it. They could, by now, have identified some of the odd glass bulbs on the surface of the ship as point defense laser nodes, but they were completely unpowered even now. The only activity from it was a brief burst of RCS as the engine assembly was blown out.
Sheng [SD | VA]
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03/09/2023 8:45 PM
Archon-1 was surprised at the damaged caused by the Arbalest’s interdictor. But nonetheless they review what the other two had said and privately deliberated with the council before they came to a decision. Instead of Archon-1 responding however instead it was a softer much more feminine voice, Archon-7. They said: “You can call your repair vessel, in the meantime we have deliberated on what you have said and come to the conclusion that you do not pose an active threat to the Second Dawn. You will be granted docking privileges at the city of Vanguard Station on the nearby moon of Concordance, a bustling trade centre with accommodations for travellers including atmosphere provisions. Do you accept?” After 7 was finished talking the interdiction field began to weaken and slowly retreat back to the Arkadia, but the three Naval vessels kept their weapons trained on the foreign ship. The Retribution also sent the co-ordinates to Vanguard Station, it was located on the surface of the closest celestial body. In fact you could see the cities lights from their current position, it wasn’t far at all and it was certainly a large city. —————————— The Captain was in the situation room talking to the council, they were conveying their approval for the quick thinking and the efficiency of the Arbalest’s crew. Judging by their praise it seemed as if this act had just decreased the time to the Captain’s next promotion by a significant margin. The Captain thanked them and one by one the lights on the holo table blinked out leaving only 7 behind who was awaiting the answer from the foreign vessel. The Captain stood up and bowed to the remaining councillor before walking towards the door, flipping the lights off on their way out. As they entered the bridge most of the crew paused and looked towards him, he gave a quick salute in response and proceeded towards the front. The crewmen quickly went back to work and he gazed out the window, looking at the slightly damaged vessel and then towards the moon of Concordance. A rocky moon in orbit of the system’s only gas giant, Vanguard Station being the closest actual city to their present position. He actually hadn’t been there in a while but he heard that it’d been doing well, if all went smoothly maybe he’d be able to get some shore leave for a bit.
March 10, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
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03/10/2023 1:48 PM
'We accept, however as this vessel was not built for landing, atmospheric- or close planetary flight we will be sending its lander shuttle instead. Please contact the shuttle for further messages, this vessel will now switch to long-range interstellar comms.' After that, comms are cut, and the various comms array over the outside of the ship realign, some of them extending, as the ship turns to face some distant star and starts running ftl comms. The ship stayed in position, seemingly listening out for a return message, slowly shifting and occasionally realigning itself... and, seemingly, "bleeding" as some amount of fluid seemed to be perpetually boiling off around the blown-out thruster array. --------------------- Meanwhile, a compartment at the bottom of the ship was opening, revealing a smaller, sleeker vessel that quickly darted away using just the RCS, got some distance from the main vessel... and the moment it fired its main thrusters it was gone. The acceleration on these ships was beyond insane. It stopped just as quickly as it has started right over the surface, having taken a trajectory that would get it close to the ground somewhat far away from the city, mostly so they didn't think the shuttle was going for a suicide dive at that speed, then... did something to its engine assembly, and flew at a much more reasonable speed the rest of the way there. It would hold just outside the city and... wait to be told where exactly to go.
March 13, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
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03/13/2023 12:13 AM
A crewman watching a console whistled as he watched the little blip rocket away and then blink out of range, the Captain coming over and taking a look before looking at the crewmen and shaking his head before walking away. He walked over to the other side of the bridge and stood over another crewmen with a similar console, tapping his metallic digit on the screen and saying: “Bring us down on the other side of the city and then when we’re landed power her down into standby and come get me, those who are interested will get a bit of liberty and we’ll play one of them new shows in the hangar. And contact the Forsaken and the Retribution, tell them the job’s done.” With that the crewman nodded and slowly started jotting stuff down before pulling a small wired microphone off of a hook and raising it to his face. The Captain gave a quick wave to the bridge before disembarking to the left, intending on relaxing in his quarters until they hit Vanguard’s dock. They’d likely slow burn it to conserve fuel and likely wouldn’t arrive until the foreign vessel was repaired and gone. —————————— Meanwhile, dock-master Trinity-Alpha was twirling a pen around her fingers as she stared at the sensor readout in front of her. Occasionally she stopped and tapped it against her head before she saw a little blip appear on it and rapidly approach, realizing it was going twice as fast as any Reborn vessel was capable of she remembered the communication earlier about the foreign shuttle and assumed this was that. Flipping a few switches before leaning down and pushing her face up against a stationary microphone and pushing down on a button next to it, she spoke into the microphone: “Dock nineteen to extrasolar vessel, you’ve been granted special permissions to land on retract pad three, delta, delta. Proceed when necessary.” Now, one thing that all Reborn pilots knew, was that terrestrial landings were the smoothest available. To prevent complicated landings and such, a team of engineers had designed a marvellous system called the “retract-pad.” Which was exactly what it sounded like, a landing pad that could be retracted into the city itself without needing the crew of the landing vessel to disembark and walk through the vacuum of space. Now some other nations might see this implementation as common sense but to the technologically inferior Reborn, this was advanced innovation. Trinity turned around and looked at the blacked-out SUV behind her and waved for it to come forward, the engine roaring to life and driving up next to her before the windshield rolled down and an armoured Reborn nodded to her. She leaned up against the door and said to the driver: “Extrasolar’s are here. When the pad pulls them in and shit drive up and give them the run down then take them to the hotel, and try to drive through the nicer parts of town. Last thing we need are foreign diplomats seeing some hydrazine junkie dying in the middle of the road, gotcha?” The driver nodded and the window rolled back up, meanwhile she turned around and waited for the shuttle to land. It was certainly an interesting day for her, not every day you get aliens touching down. (edited)
Cpt_Waterbubble
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03/13/2023 8:52 AM
As it had been waiting, the shuttle basically hadn't moved, perfectly holding position. After making the necessary assumptions as to which pad they'd just been told to land on after gettign the message, it suddenly... jumped? at the pad, giving just a single burst of thrust, at first it looked like their jump would overshoot the pad, but it gave a second pulse to stop right above the pad, then extended and activated another, previously hidden array of thrusters facing down, which were used to put the shuttle down smoothly. The legs it landed on did look more like... insect legs with lots of machinery in them than the mechanical setups you'd expect, but they did work just as well. Though, seeing a spaceship taking a step to position itself right on a pad was... unusual. Sitting on the pad would also allow a much better view of this odd "little" ship... a lot of it seemed to be rather insectoid in design (especially thanks to the two large pairs of antennae on its "head"), and this one too adhered to the same colour coding and odd design choices as the main ship. Ceramic plates over black rubber, barely any metal, sparse exposed organic components, though at least this one wasn't wriggling as much as the other ship. ----------------------------- Having heard what they called the pads, Iuno had decided to wait for the retract pad to do just that, but was still excitedly walking in circles in the rear hold of the vessel... But being a rather small room, only meant to hold his and Valence's frame along with the few ambassadors and guards accompanying them, that meant he was moreso just walking around Valence repeatedly. ----------------------------- The main ship, meanwhile, retracted its comms systems again and returned to facing the sun with its massive black wings, mostly unmoving now, aside from the few antenna arrays aimed down at the planet, presumably to keep contact with the shuttle.
Sheng [SD | VA]
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03/13/2023 9:19 AM
When the shuttle touched down and stabilized itself four bright orange lights flicked on around the pad and illuminated their surroundings. It was currently night on the moon so the dome was rather dark, the glass-like compound that it was made of was a pitch black colour. It was only discernible by the various lights around the dome flashing to indicate to passing craft that it was there. The pad itself was rather simple, an octagon with a large symbol painted on the centre, presumably a letter in their language to indicate a landing site. It was connected to the dome through a long strip of thick grey metal with gears visible on the sides, at the end of the strip was a massive hangar door with two industrial orange lights in the top corners. The pad lurched back slightly before it slowly started to retract and the massive doors started to open, revealing a large grey room adorned with various machines and such. The pad slowly slid into the room with the doors closing behind it and stopped in the centre before two large nozzles extended downwards from the roof, a moment later they blasted the shuttle with some form of highly pressurized vapour for a few seconds before stopping and retracting back into the roof. A similar door was in front of the vessel and it also opened, revealing a large industrial area. Several large buildings were immediately visible, most of them looking like warehouses and hangars with a large transport ship visibly being repaired in one of them. A large variety of yellow-painted logistical vehicles were bustling about delivering various supplies and pieces of equipment around, similarly painted Reborn with orange reflective vests were standing around writing things or lifting thing onto said logistical vehicles. In the distance, although heavily obscured by the industrial buildings, was the city itself. Long, thin rails with what appeared to be long train-like vehicles rocketing around attached to said rails. A few sky scrapers could be seen illuminated by lights of various colours and quite a few aerial craft could be seen buzzing around throughout the buildings. The dome itself was barely visible, only the faint shimmer of the material visible to the particularly observant. Instead it mostly looked like a normal night sky, but there weren’t any clouds. —————————— Trinity watched the hangar doors open and stared at the shuttle, muttering as she pointed to it and motioned for the SUV to pull up to it. Which it did. The SUV itself was very… intriguing. It had two front wheels but four rear ones and 3 doors on each side. They were black doors with completely tinted windows and unlike more primitive designs it completely lacked a visible grille on the front. instead a long light bar emitting a decently bright glow went across the front. The tires were quite smooth and the hub caps were solid disks of a matte black material. It drove right up to the shuttle with a roar before stopping in front of it, a white emblem visible on the hood of the vehicle with three letters below it. The engine sputtered off and the door on the left side opened and presumably the driver stepped out. They were completely covered in matte black armour with a pistol attached to their thigh, their chassis unlike any of the other Reborn there. If they had any knowledge of Reborn castes then it’d be immediately obvious that this was a member of a Corporate Tactical Force of some type, well equipped contractors hired by the EPA for sensitive situations that required specialized hands, it seemed that this was one of those times. They stepped around and opened the two other doors and then went back to stand by the Driver’s door again and rested their hands behind their back, waiting for someone to disembark. (edited)
Cpt_Waterbubble
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03/13/2023 9:42 AM
Just a few seconds after the arrived, the ship started to move again, putting its legs in a different position and lowering its front end almos tall the way to the floor before folding part of it up to expose some sort of door, along with some of the extremely confusing insides of the ship. The door opened, slowly and with a lot of fog... not for some technical reason but literally just for dramatic effect. And then... Thonk. Thonk. Thonk. Slow, rythmical steps of something... rather large and heavy, breaching through the wall of fog and darkness. ------------------------ Easily as large as the Van that had brought that team here, covered in heavy ceramic pads and odd triangular metal panels with a blue glow behind them, that seemed weirdly out of place for the tech they'd seen so far. A beetle-like main body, an extended and thickened body segment where the head should be, ending in a rather anticlimactic perfect sphere for an actual head, decorated with just three holographic lines of blue light. Six heavy legs emerging from under the main body, several unidetifiable manipulator arms folded away under the "neck" segments. The main body split into sevral sectors, each looking like it could somehow retract or fold away or shift aside, no way to tell what was behind them. Its movements methodical, directed and purposed. Valence. And sitting on his neck segment, excitedly waving to the greeting team, was the complete opposite: Iuno. Tall, thin, the parts of his body somehow just floating in place without any visible attachments to hold them there, very fast almost erratic movements, four arms but other wise a normal humanoid shape, his head the characteristic yellow orb with four lines indicating eyes, the headphone-shaped bar of... whatever it was that projecting his head folded down. Walking besides them, one on each side of Valence's neck, were two other Capulin, one was seemingly a pretty normal humanoid. Two arms, two legs, kinda weird head and hand shape but decently normal. The other was a bell and/or upside-down flower, with a robot head on it not too dissimilar from theirs. Just... more round. And following behind, three on each side, were six identical, smaller mecha-beetles.
Sheng [SD | VA]
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03/13/2023 10:19 AM
The armoured Reborn stared at the disembarked individuals and shook his head with a sigh. He gave a quick wave to them before saying: “If it isn’t fitting in the car then it’s not coming along, simple as.” Without giving them time to respond he then turned and hopped in, closing the door and the SUV sputtered a bit before roaring to life as the lights flicked on. The two doors facing them staying open seemingly as an invitation to enter. Meanwhile the driver played around with the console before reaching over to the passengers side and opening the glove box. Moving some type of compact gun out of the way and grabbing his pda, closing up the glovebox putting it down into a compartment next to the console and plugging it in. Suddenly the audio system buzzed to life and started quietly playing some sort of rural country tune, to which he started bobbing his head too while he waited for the individuals to do whatever it was that they were doing. Meanwhile Trinity just stared at the ship in exasperated confusion. How in the actual fuck was she going to go about refuelling that thing. Did they even want it refuelled? What the fuck was even the procedure for an alien shuttle landing! It was in the handbook somewhere but no one actually read that shit! She let out a frustrated sigh before turning towards a few dock workers who were stood perfectly still as if hoping to go unnoticed. She pointed at them and barked out a “you three go talk to them and figure this shit out!” She then scratched her robotic head before shaking it and returning back to her console, tapping away whilst praying that they’d actually be able to figure out so that way she didn’t have too.
Cpt_Waterbubble
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03/13/2023 11:06 AM
Valence replied with some brief, rather menacing low droning sound, but that was seemingly not directed at them, but at his guards. Iuno hopped off, and him and the two other Capulin headed towards the Van, while one of the guards sprinted up to Valence's head. The touched heads, there was a brief chittering sound of communication between the two... then the massive frames lights suddenly changed colour, away from the monotone blue lighting to a mix of blues and yellows that the guard had had before, while the guard's lights turned solid blue. The three blue striped demanifesting from the bigger frame's head and appearing on the smaller one, as it too turned to follow into the van. The frame that used to house valence slowly walking back into the shuttle. --------------------------------- A brief conversation played out as they entered the Van: "How inconsiderate, to force my dearie into a different body... may as well just have let us follow them, no way you couldn't keep pace with their vehicles. What if we'd all been too large?" 'Their city. Their procedure. No arguing.' "Fine, fine..." ... "You know, it's weird for someone intended to rule a faction to not have been given... like, any dedicated systems for diplomacy, isn't it?" 'The precursors were bad at foresight. That's why they made you.' "Yeah, I guess you're- Hey!" low chuckle from Valence first, then also from Iuno. the two others just looked at eachother and lightly shook their heads --------------------------------- The few guards waiting outside the shuttle would be looking over to the dock workers who got yelled at, it wasn't exactly easy to read the face of a mechanical beetle with a solid ceramic hemisphere for a face, but, judging by the weird lines and symbols they were waiting for them to approach.
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
03/13/2023 12:23 PM
The Driver adjusted a knob on the console and the song changed to a more upbeat song with a catchy tune. He started bobbing his head and adjusted his rear-view mirror (which is something he should have done earlier). A small ornament hung from it of a Reborn holding up a book with a strange symbol on it and the words below the image in bright white reading out “Retainment is our way!” When the two entered the car he pushed a button and the doors closed themselves. He looked up at his mirror and stared at them for a second before placing a hand on the gear shift and putting the car into gear, they started driving away and he said: “So, enjoying your welcome to Vanguard so far? Don’t worry, the rest of the city isn’t as dry as the docks. And the hotel the Council booked for you two is top notch, I’ll check you in and show you two too your rooms and then you’ll get the night to yourselves. Then in the morning I’ll be back to give you a sort of guided tour of the city, which will actually just be telling you which places are cool and then you telling me where you want to go. Think of me as your temporary bodyguard, I’ll make sure you’re both safe and comfortable at all times whilst also ensuring that your privacy and dignity are respected. I can be as close or as far as you want me to be but I do have a job to do and I will not disregard it, clear?” He stopped at an intersection and turned left, the industrial scenery slowly starting to turn into a more urban environment. A few pedestrians were walking around and the buildings were becoming more decorated and cleaner but windows suddenly tinted themselves fully to the point they were completely opaque. He continued: “Now, because you’re foreign diplomats who also have minimal knowledge of us, you’ve been granted extensive diplomatic immunity. But it isn’t blanket coverage, if you do something bad enough you will get dinged for it. So no killing anyone, no stealing, none of that. And if someone tells you not to do something then don’t do it. But don’t worry about it too much because I’ll be within intervention distance during your stay, so i’ll catch you before you fuck things up too bad. Another thing you should note is that we’ve installed a new phone system into your rooms so that you’re able to communicate with the dock your shuttle is at in real time should that need arise.” He stopped and pressed a button and their windows rolled down, he chuckled and motioned for them to look outside before he turned right, the sight that they were met with would certainly explain his actions. They were immediately hit with the sound of some rather loud music playing outside, with Reborn of many different castes and colours playing instruments and holding up various things at commerce stands. Massive skyscrapers were visible all around them with screens attached advertising various products and services, some were showing news panels that upon closer examination were showing an aerial view of the very car they were in. Various other cars were buzzing past and alongside them with some of them rolling down their windows and snapping pictures of the car the two were in. Above them aerial vehicles buzzed up and around at a variety of speeds, one or two even hovered in sync with the car. The car took a turn and immediately the sidewalks were filled with various reports who immediately pointed their various devices towards the car and started recording and snapping pictures. On the centre of the block was a talk building with a black marble style structure lined with a blueish crystalline material, stairs covered in a red carpet descended from the front door down to the street which was guarded by several Reborn in an identical cast to their driver holding compact rifles. The driver pulled up to the building and stopped, reaching to the glovebox and pulling out the compact weapon he had stored in there earlier and motioned for them to get out.
Cpt_Waterbubble
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03/13/2023 2:13 PM
They all seemed rather impressed and intrigued at what they were getting to see of the alien city, Iuno practically glue to the window. Several times he tries to wave at people outside, only for valence to remind him that those are tinted and the people can't see him. At least four separate times, in short succession. All looking especially impressed by the building they ended up pulling up to. ------------------------------- At the part about "respecting privacy and dignity" Iuno was very obviously about to start speaking, but then nothing was actually said as 3 loops of blue light manifested around his head, and he just looked at Valence, mildly annoyed. ... "Well you people sure have made a lot of precautions... Good, though, We might not have to make use of a lot of them. We don't need much space, aaand... the connection to the shuttle is handled by the shuttle and the big ship in orbit. Me and Valence don't actually compute in these little shells, we're running remotely from on the main ship. That also means... if anyone would decide to attack us for whatever reason, get the two others safe first. Me and her have lots of replacement shells, they don't." ... "Also, would it be bad for our own guards to openly show they've got weapons?" "...And whatever is that building made of...?" --- Assuming these get an answer before they leave the vehicle --- The little beetle now housing Valence would be the first to step out, then Iuno, then the other two side-by-side behind them. Valence looking like he gave not a singular fuck as usual, Iuno and the humanoid one with their arms politely behind their backs and looking around (Though Iuno mostly looking up at the building and not really where he was going), the bell also looking around but... that one didn't seem to have any arms. (edited)
March 14, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
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03/14/2023 7:52 AM
Their driver now turned bodyguard motioned for them to hurry along towards the hotel while looking around and watching the assembled crowd of onlookers and press warily. The second he was clear of the vehicle one of the armoured Reborn that were already there wordlessly walked up and got into it before pulling away from the hotel and speeding off. Their bodyguard then turned to them and said: “No need, we’ll make sure you all get to where you’re going in one piece. We get paid well for a reason.” As they approached the carpet it’d become blatantly obvious that not only were the Reborn their to make sure no one tried anything funny but also to disperse the massive crowd that’d gathered. Barricades were set up around the entrance and several of them were aiming their weapons into the crowd shouting warnings to stay back. As they’d begin entering the hotel red flashing lights suddenly could be visible accompanied by the roar of some sort of aerial vehicle, only that this one was painted completely black with the same emblem the car had on it’s side. Oh and it had a massive autocannon on the front that was aimed at the left side of the crowd, that was a pretty big difference as well. It also started blaring warnings to disperse via a loudspeaker somewhere on the exterior of the vessel. The inside of the hotel was rather nice. Their guard collapsed the weapon he’d retrieved from the glovebox and attached it to his back before heading to the reception desk, motioning for them to follow. The receptionist was quite extravagantly adorned, seemingly covered in silver lined with gold and spoke with a rich voice when they approached: “Welcome to Cloud haven, you room numbers have been sent to your pda and once you’re settled a serviceperson will be sent to each room to accommodate and provide for anything you wish. We hope you enjoy your stay here in Paradise.” The guard nodded respectfully and turned towards the others, letting out a sigh before resting his hands on his hips and saying: “Well, we’re finally here. I’m not going to lie that went as smooth as I think it could have gone. Now it’s time for introductions, you can call me Epsilon. Welcome to Vanguard Station, now do you want to go straight to your rooms or do you want to hang out in the lobby?” He pointed to his right where a massive TV was attached to the wall and various other amenities were scattered around, seemingly some sort of welcoming buffet. If they tried to look back towards the entrance outside they’d notice that the entrance was now similarly tinted except that they could not see outside. Interesting.
Cpt_Waterbubble
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03/14/2023 8:18 AM
-still outside- "Good. I sure hope so."... ... ..."This does take me back to the days of when I was first put into power, the crowds, the escorts, the excessive amount of firepower threats for crowd retention... Just without the suicide bombers. So good job on having your crowds under control." ---------------------------- Having more clearly identified the type of crowd this was, ALl four of them were no longer looking into the crowd, either looking ahead or, like Iuno, just kinda staring at the building... And promptly almost walking into the door, excep Valence grabs him by the foot last moment to pull him closer. Surprisingly he only almost falls over, but keeps walking. Valence would quickly and quietly follow that up with a 'Would you mind trying to look at least somewhat less incompetent than this at first contact?' Inside the building they just resumed their looking around. ---------------------------- "Well... good to have a name for reference and, I see no reason for us to go to a room now... we barely just got going... so... Assuming we have to wait, might as well do that in the Lobby. Also... I heard that other unit mention something about a PDA... just a guess, but, would your people also happen to have a univeral information sharing device as we do?" The two other Capulin both show a little device, about the size of a pen. Iuno also suddenly sounded a lot more... mentally present. Out of all the things, that one little detail had instantly caught his full attention.
Sheng [SD | VA]
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03/14/2023 8:50 AM
They nodded along with what they said before flinching when they said “unit” and the receptionist gasped. They turned and held up a hand before making a sound similar to clearing their throat and said: “Just letting you know, the U word is a no no word. Hah. Anyway yeah we do have a ‘universal info gadget’ or whatever. Called a PDA, personal data apparatus but some call it assistant and some call it an expensive piece of shit, few names for it really. The pricier models have ANCNET access but most don’t. That’s more of a personal computer thing, y’know.” He nodded before pointing to a remote near the previously mentioned TV and said: “I’m assuming you know how to work that? Pretty simple, to be honest.” He nodded without actually waiting for the answer and turned back to the receptionist and said something indiscernible to them before immediately snaking his way over to what looks like a giant vending machine, poking a few buttons on it until it dispensed an unmarked simply grey can with a tab on the top. Pulling it back with a pop as the smell of oil and gasoline immediately flooded the room, a previously unnoticeable cap popped open just beneath his “face” and he then proceeded to pour the entirety of the contents into it before smashing the can against his head and tossing the crumpled can into a nearby bin. He turned back towards them before saying: “Oh yeah, unless you want to drink essentially really diluted rocket fuel I would pretty much avoid any liquid available for purchase unless it is explicitly given to you by myself, the staff here or someone who looks like me. And definitely don’t drink any red fluid that’s given to you no matter the circumstances, because that’s hydrazine and drinking it will fuck you up to a significant degree.” He nodded before tapping his fingers against his armoured thigh, seemingly debating on what to do before he slowly looked over at the TV and shrugged. Hopping over the back of a couch and plopping down on it before reaching out and grabbing the remote, then pausing and whipping his head around excitedly to them and saying: “Shit I almost forgot the first episode of the new season of Arkadia’s Revenge came out today. You all gotta come watch this shit!” He then quickly looked back at the tv and pressed various buttons before the screen switched to a title card, a symbol of a city with letters arranged below in their native language as heroic epic style music played in the background. The music ended and the title card then switched to a scene where a much more primitive looking Reborn with much older military equipment was huddled in a trench with various other similar looking Reborn. It seemed interesting.
Cpt_Waterbubble
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03/14/2023 9:35 AM
Iuno briefly mumbled something about the translators being very hastily made after being told about the word, his head hologram briefly flickering into a wall of foreing letters and shifting code, with him letting out a somewhat angry noise for which they didn't even need a translator to know that it was a swear in his native language. --- He stayed quiet for just a second after Epsilon was done, also sitting down, then... "You've... just made one hell of an assumption there. We're not made from your tech, always keep that in mind. We don't..." He stops, turns to face the humanoid Capulin "What model bioreactor did you have?" C1:'15-V.' "Maybe... not tested, but the 16s can..." Turns to the bell one C2:'8-MD' "Not that one, alright," turns back to face the guy "Okay, aside from one of us maybe, we don't run on the same fuels you do. I've got induction charging and swapable power cells, they" pointing at the humanoid and bell "have Bioreactors meant for more... organic substances, and he" pointing at Valence "Has fusion cells absorbers, so, basically just runs on hydrogen. We can all share power, so, just a supply of hydrogen will propably do, but... yeah we can't really make good use of liquid fuels like those." ... "Also... you say that like we can purchase anything here. I... wasn't provided any of whatever currency you people use." Iuno and Valence were lookig at Epsilon during this, the other two would quickly just turn tto also watch the TV.
Sheng [SD | VA]
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03/14/2023 10:02 AM
Epsilon continued to watch TV, the scene shifting to the cast charging a building whilst a blinding flash appeared in the background and an all too familiar style of mushroom cloud started to rise from it, the charging cast then immediately started taking heavy fire from a bombed out and lopsided skyscraper and several of them hit the ground brutally. He threw up his hands in exasperation when that happened and shouted something about how inaccurate the depiction was before he realized they were talking to them and turned to them: “Oh, uh. Right, we’re still integrating with the rest of the galaxy but if you have Sig most well established places will take that. If not uhm, fuck it take this.” He pulled out a thin plastic card and tossed it to Iuno, it was pitch black with a thin golden line going down the middle with more foreign lettering on it. He then turned back to the TV and watched as a tank slowly rolled up and blasted a hole into the building the enemy was in, pumping his fist and muttering something about how now it was becoming accurate. However suddenly the TV froze much to the dismay of Epsilon, but his outburst was quickly silenced when the screen changed to a strange symbol much like the emblems on the armoured vehicles they had seen but without the lettering. A familiar deep robotic voice spoke from the TV with a noticeably irritated tone: “Guardsman, you are SUPPOSED to be escorting them to their rooms and making sure their needs are met, not watching fucking TV while they ask questions about our society. Get. Off. Your. Ass. And do your fucking job, when I show up in the morning I had better be impressed with your devotion to your duty. Is that clear?” Epsilon, who had quickly stood up, was now kneeling and he quietly said: “Of course, councillor.” The deep voice’s tone lightened up significantly after that and they turned their attention to the others, not that you could notice that until they spoke: “I apologize for the laziness of your guard, please, enjoy your stay here at Vanguard and relax while your ship is repaired. Anything you need will be provided of course, have a good night.” The TV then returned back to the show but at a much quieter volume, the receptionist looked shaken and Epsilon stood up and motioned towards the hallway and said: “If you would please follow me.”
Cpt_Waterbubble
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03/14/2023 10:35 AM
Iuno didn't exactly pay attention to the TV, but uddenly did when the image changed... he seemed somewhere between surprised and amused at the sudden appearance, slowly tilting into something betwen mild annoyance, concern and confusion... To the voice in the TV "Uhh, hold on, repaired? The... shuttle wasn't damaged, and... I wasn't sure if that earlier was a translation error or you misheard me , I said rescue vessel, not repair. We've not called that in yet... they're pretty expensive to run, so if anything is being repaired... it shouldn't be. And, please be less harsh on this guy, I chose not to go to my room yet. He's doing just fine." ... He sighs, then gets up to follow Epsilon "But, very well, I guess I'm going there now." The other two had been watching the TV, the humanoid one just watching the bell having deployed a rather thin robotic arm from underneath the bell and taking notes on their... Pen? Turns out those had holographic screens in them, making the whole device about the size of a large mobile phone or small tablet when the screen was on. They both seemed surprised at the sudden appearance, the humanoid one shifting to a more formal posture, the bell still taking notes. And Valence just observing with the same unchanging expression and posture, he just stood there like a damn statue until he was asked to follow.
Sheng [SD | VA]
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03/14/2023 11:15 AM
Epsilon caught a card that was tossed from the receptionist and continued into the hallway, passing by identical doors with strange symbols, presumably numbers, on them. Coming to a stop to two doors on opposite sides of the hallway. He swiped his card over the handle of the one on the left and the door slowly swung open, revealing an absolutely excessive room. The floor was a rich purple carpet and the walls were a dark black marble, a massive bed was in the centre with a black blanket inlaid with golden decorations. Two very fluffy pillows were at the end with an identical style, there was a massive TV at the opposite side of the room from the bed and large speakers below it. On the far side of the room there were tinted one-way windows that showed the bustling city outside, aerial vehicles buzzing about and fireworks occasionally crackling in the distance. There were two other doors on the opposite corner with two more symbols inscribed on them. Epsilon went over to both of them and tapped them in order of left to right and said: “This is called a shower, designed for organic species who require liquid water for… whatever they do in these things. On this side is a gas shower more suited towards synthetic individuals, this thing will decon you in a minute if that. In each room you’ll see a small red button, push it and you’ll have five men in here in full body armour with assault rifles burst into the room. I believe some call it a ‘panic button’. At the door near the light switch is a green button, that calls room service for whatever you may need or want. The big comfy looking thing is a bed, it’s a bit old because most Reborn don’t use them but this room was specifically designed for extrasolar visitors. If at anytime you’d want my presence for some reason just call out but if there is an emergency I highly recommend pressing the button instead.” He nodded before tapping his fingers against the door frame, seemingly thinking what to do before he gave them a wave and left. Entering the room on the right and closing the door, which locked with an audible click a moment later.
Cpt_Waterbubble
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03/14/2023 12:06 PM
"Huh, well... that's a style of accomodation I've not seen since... like, my very early days. We don't build much like that anymore either... Oh well, it'll do. Just need to find some way to get a reliable hydrogen supply out of a shower..." With that last comment having been said rather offhandedly, he stepped into the room, the others following behind, and he closed the door. -------------------------------
Cpt_Waterbubble
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03/14/2023 12:25 PM
What followed shortlywithin the room, most other races would place somewhere between disturbing, disgusting and absolutely horrifying... but for the Capulin, it was as normal as could be. They were modular, and they needed a device that could be made from parts they had. So, taking parts from all three others, Electrolyzer and power processing parts out of the bell, Tubing and excess casings out of the humanoid, a Fusion cell compressor from the shell Valence inhabited, Iuno took those parts from them... And put them together. The damage barely visible beyond melt-sealed tears in the rubber between their plates and a few new open access ports, the new device covered in rubber and ceramic shells with the help of the countless tools under the bells petals... He had reassembled currently unneeded fragments of their internal organs into a compact, portable, self-powering high-flow electrolyzer with the necessary parts to refuel fusion cartridges. And swiftly mounted it to the shower to let it start working.
Sheng [SD | VA]
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03/14/2023 1:05 PM
The Next Morning.
Epsilon knocked on their door three times before swiping his card and opening it up, walking inside and over to the window. He stared out at the expanse in front of him before he said: “Hope you’re ready for an exciting and educational day of adventure and fun. Jokes aside, the car’s out front so when you’re ready we’ll head on down and I’ll drive you around and show you some sights then if you want to stop at one or go somewhere completely different you let me know and I’ll bring you there.” The morning “sky” in the dome was the endless expanse of space, with the city illuminated as if it was a terrestrial day by the system’s star. The windows were slightly tinted but not near as much as they were last night, varied forms of traffic buzzing around the city and in the vast distance beyond the dome several naval ships could be seen slowly burning across space. Certainly not a bad view, but judging by how fancy this place was it was to be expected that the view would be good. He reached out and tapped the window before pulling out his pda and started watching something on it. A quiet voice said: “Efforts on Ixlo are currently underway, although personnel currently on station have yet to comment as you can see two Federal drop ships were deployed from the FNSV Salvation a newly renovated Havalen Class. We switch now to the Corporate Command Centre in the Ravine system where trace amounts of tritium have just been uncovered, estimates say this will allow for another Arkadia Class to enter construction.” He snorted and muttered something about tax money being burned and switched to another channel while he waited on the others in the room.
Cpt_Waterbubble
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03/14/2023 3:42 PM
"Very well... I don't quite see the purpose in sightseeing when pictures would do, but, I guess it's a nice chance of pace from my usual work..." Taking a glance out of the window "Also may I say, at least from how few of you I've seen... it's impressive that you people put so much in terms of time, effort and resources into building cities like this to ward off space and fit your bodies, instead of just... adapting your bodies to fit space. That's what I did, at least. Might just be my approach though, the engineering is still impressive." And pauses to listen to the (presumed) news report... ..."Tritium? Really, that's rare to you? Man, am I ever gonna have lots of nearly-free goodies to offer your people... Well then, let's go." Waving over for the others to get up. They'd been idly sitting on the bed, Valence in utter bored silence, the other two conversing in their native language (Which sounded like some mix of bitcrushed choir and slightly more musical dialup modem), but would all swiftly get up and follow.
Sheng [SD | VA]
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03/14/2023 6:46 PM
Epsilon shrugged and put his pda away, the council had decided that domes were way more cost effective then included life support systems so who was he to say otherwise. Even the recent bill to introduce more vacuum capable castes as standard had been completely shot down by the council, something many found odd but lacked the motivation to truly push the issue. He said: “And yes it is rare, quite a shock when we learned many have it in abundance. But we have also become the producers of some of the most potent chemical fuels that the galaxy has seen as a result.” He opened the door to their room again and flinched before quickly moving to the side. In the doorway stood a slightly shorter Reborn with a slightly more feminine figure who seemed… plated in sheets of diamond with cracks inlaid with gold. Interesting. Two heavily armed and armoured guards stood behind them, holding belt fed machine guns with the belts holding what looked like rather large rounds. Epsilon bowed slightly and the individual entered the room with the two guards remaining outside. They looked at the room and nodded in approval before strolling up towards the two AI, staring at them intently and lifting up one of Iuno’s arms and walking around them. They then stopped in front of them and spoke in a deeply rich and slightly feminine voice: “The ol’ brute has sent me in his place, we’ve already talked before but I figured an introduction in-person wouldn’t be such a horrible idea. I am Archon five, you can simply call me five though. And my oh my I must say this design is rather adorable, created for you or did you design it yourself?” They shook their head before turning towards the window and approaching it, looking out towards the city and saying: “Actually don’t tell me, it adds a nice little air of mystery to you. Anyway I’ll be accompanying you all for this exploratory endeavour and we can chit chat while doing so, isn’t that just wonderful?~” They turned back towards them and leaned back against the window, crossing their legs and arms as they waited to see what they said in response.
March 15, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
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03/15/2023 11:00 AM
Despite it not being visible much in his expression, he did get a bit flustered at the compliment... As soon as she stops talking, Iuno looks over at Valence, triumphantly "Hah, I told you they wouldn't be as dry-cold as you are!" Disgruntled silence from Valence "Well anyways... Yes!" Looking back at her, intently studying her ... "Wait, is that... frame of yours here is that... you? Like is your processing going on in that frame, or, is it more like me with a remote-controlled puppet and a big server somewhere else?" Once again, he suddenly seemed a lot more present, and somewhat more exicted. Head ever-so-slightly tilted, speaking noticeably faster, and expressively moving his hands around a lot. And having four of them, that meant lots of gestures. (edited)
Sheng [SD | VA]
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03/15/2023 11:21 AM
Five snickered at the questions whilst she slowly tapped her metal digits against her right arm, quiet little clacks being audible from the contacts. She then uncrossed her arms and legs and looked out towards the window for a second and said: “Think of this as a vehicle for me. It’s currently being remotely piloted by me from the Citadel but is highly specialized and configured to my own liking and specifications, and being able to.. What’s the word, ‘transfer’ into a new body is a privilege only the council has access too. As we were designed to be able to move freely throughout the digital world, ordinary Reborn were not. They were organic minds injected into a synthetic body, we were synthetic by birth. If a Reborn tried to transfer, while possible, it would be an extremely dangerous procedure. So we outlawed transfers in the first century. The Citadel also has the strongest technology in the whole of the Second Dawn so no need to worry about latency or similar issues.” She tapped against the window, pointing to a particularly bright white dot far off in the expanse of space beyond the dome and continued: “That, is New Archon. Our capital world and where the Citadel currently resides, however I must disappoint you by saying a majority of the council is rather cold and dry. Brute, aka ‘Archon-1’ is a perfect example of such a… boring attitude. He was the first of us created, way back before the final transfer during the end of the restorationist wars. So he can be a bit rough around the edges, he kind of lives by the old proverb ‘control that which you cannot destroy.’ It’s the rest of us that keep him reigned in.” She let out a bored sigh before turning around and pointing towards the door and said: “Sorry but if you want History you should have talked to Herald, I’M here to show you our totally awesome city that I personally invested billions into to make sure it was cool and fun and pretty! So can we go on the tour now?” Her voice had an underlying tone of excitement. Evidently she really wanted to show them around, Epsilon just facepalming and muttering something about scaring off foreign investors. (edited)
Cpt_Waterbubble
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03/15/2023 11:36 AM
The look in his eyes was like an excited child "Yes!" Turning on his nenexistant heel to face the door, and making some heroic pointing gesture to the door with one of his lower arms ..."We-... Wrong arm!" Making the same gesture with the upper arm on that side "We go!" ..."Also, very good to know you do work like us, but propably with less copying. Excellent choice. Where are we going?" The humanoid, who had sortof been standing near Epsilon, quietly spoke... C1:'Iuno's far too much of a social idiot to be deterred by any amount of conversation, and V has to deal with him every moment of his existence and has like, just stopped caring about that type of behaviour. It's impossible to scare them off like that.' Before turning to walk over to Iuno, just like the other two.
March 16, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
03/16/2023 5:55 PM
She clapped her hands together and said “Excellent! Let’s get going then!” And proceeded towards the door, opening it and whispering something to the two guards outside who nodded in response. Epsilon just shook his head and sighed before stepping out into the hallway himself to follow her. Without waiting for the other two to follow the four of them made their way to the main lobby, the same receptionist was there once again and Epsilon tossed the card back too them. He approached the main entrance and peered outside, the crowd had all but grown. Likely due to the appearance of a councillor, but so had the security. Now genuine barricades were set up with properly equipped guards standing behind them, but the crowd was much calmer from the night before. Three of the SUVs waited at the end of the carpet instead of just one this time. The two guards split off and entered the one in the middle whilst Epsilon and Five entered the first one, the back doors opening automatically once again for the foreign delegation. Once Five and Epsilon were situated Five turned to Epsilon and said “Where do you think is a good place to start? I was thinking we could start with the government centre but they might find that a bit dry, perhaps the city’s centre instead? Because that’s got everything, the war museum, cinemas and it’s tourist friendly so we don’t need to worry too much about security.” Epsilon thought about it for a moment, pulling out his pda and looking at a map of the city. He stared at it for a few seconds before saying back to her “Yeah definitely save the government centre for last, but starting with the city’s centre might not be a bad idea… Yeah, I think that’s what we’ll do.” Epsilon nodded to himself and the SUV roared to life, he looked back towards the other vehicles of the convoy while he waited for the foreign delegation. Then realizing he had yet to put on music so he reached down and pressed a button and a calm electric style tune started to hum in the background.
March 17, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
03/17/2023 3:47 PM
Iuno seemed somewhat confused about hs last question having been entirely ignored. All four of them simply silently following behind until they got to the car... They were directly behind he two, so, did hear everything. "Well... I'll trust your judgement on destiantion. We may be by no means tourists, but, avoiding... unsightly areas in favor of favorable diplomatic opinion is a respectable effort, and one I apreciate as a sign of good intentions." Said with not even a hint of any kind of sarcasm.. he really did just say that he saw trying to trick him as a good thing. ... "Though by all respect... anything that I can see all the same by being shown a picture or text or similar of it, we can avoid. That is to say... no museums unless they're really something special. Those are usually dreadfully boring, and I might as well just parse historical documents and learn more, faster, better." (edited)
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
03/17/2023 7:29 PM
Epsilon looked back at Iuno and nodded, turning to Five who snickered and looked back at him. He snorted and muttered something about skipping the museum before putting the car into gear and peeling off, the two cars behind them following at a respectable distance. They turned right at the end of the block with the Hotel and started heading towards the centre of the city. The further they went the more active it became, in both good and bad ways. There were more people but the general feel also became less joyful, the buildings grew larger and fancier and the people walking around looked cleaner and more formal. There was also an increase in “police” presence, if you could call it that. Armoured black personnel carriers went from being a scarce sight to being seen every second block, an unexpectedly sudden increase to be sure. Epsilon glanced at them on occasion and gave them a slight nod. Five meanwhile was abnormally silent for the entire ride, explicitly avoiding looking out at the people of the city. Epsilon noticed this and started to increase his speed slightly. They even passed a team of Reborn clad in thick, black armour seemingly arresting a duo of Reborn. Their rifles pressed against the back of their heads and some of the metal on the detainees face appeared even slightly dented. It was then when Five finally spoke in a quiet tone “Unity comes at a cost.” And then went silent again. They passed a large grey skyscraper with a poster hanging near the entrance of one of those black armoured Reborn holding another at gunpoint, the one at gunpoint was holding a smaller Reborn hostage with a knife to the side of their head. Text above the image read out “REPORT DISSIDENTS TO LOCAL E.P.A HEADQUARTERS. SYMPATHIZERS WILL BE PENALIZED.” Epsilon looked at it for a second before turning to Five, staring at her with a slight hesitance to his stance before he returned his eye to the road. Finally, a large circle became visible in front of them and they turned right to enter what seemed like a massive roundabout. Reborn of all kinds were walking around stopping into various buildings, many of them seemingly joyful and excited about whatever it was they were doing and the atmosphere itself had partially returned to the joyful nature it was earlier. That is if you ignored the scattered pairs of soldiers patrolling around holding machine guns. It seemed that Vanguard Station was not the perfect paradise it originally appeared to be.
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
03/17/2023 8:16 PM
It took a short while for Iuno to start speaking again, thought, it looked more like he'd been lost in thought most of the way until now... but still carefully tracking everything going on outside "It... really does seem you people aren't too different from my creators. You don't need to be concerned about me seeing this - I was pretty much expecting it. Cultural differences in a system allowing for high freedom of thought and action inevitably leads to conflict. Exactly the conflict I was purposed to resolve, actually. Especially in species under as much societal flux as convertee-artificial ones like us, it leads to heavy resistance agains tthe system, it did for us too... and, while I may have defeated it, as you so perfectly put it... unity comes at a cost." ...He spoke with... not quite regret, but a sortof... weariness. He was understanding, but cautious. And in a more serious tone than previously, they had really hit into his main area of expertise with this. ... "I wonder if you'll also take the same steps I needed reach the near-total unity my kind achieved after I was instated. At least you guys have a head start on being accepted as mostly artificial. And having the right goals. Though... I'd advise agains taking any of my advice on any of this." followed by a mild chuckle ...and then Valence unexpectedly cut in 'As much as I do not wish to interfere with a field outside my purpose, I must disagree. Despite how much a fool he may make of him self, he still posesses immense capabilities in this field and should be considered as an advisor should one be needed.' Iuno now looking down at Valence with a mix of immense confusion and disbelief
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
03/17/2023 10:52 PM
The two Reborn sat in silence after what the two other AI said, with Epsilon looking back and nodding in acknowledgment before opening the doors to the car and getting out. Epsilon looked back at the other cars but no one was disembarking from them, so Epsilon just turned to look at Five who looked behind her then back at Epsilon and shrugged as if to say “what?” Epsilon shook his head before looking at the two AI’s and then the doors to the SUV opened automatically for them. When they eventually disembarked he’d place his hands on his hips and then say “Alright there’s a decent bit of choices for the two of you. Could take a visit to the cinema and see what’s playing, which I think might be the funnest option if that’s what you’re going for. But we can also take a visit to the local E.P.A headquarters and you could get a tour there, won’t be as fun as the Cinema but it will be culturally informative and definitely not as dry as the museum.” Five snickered at that before waltzing over and flicking him on the side of the head before saying herself “You know they probably have no idea what the EPA is right? Goofball?” She snorted before facing towards the two of them and saying “The EPA is the Executive Protection Agency, they are our police and military force. They answer directly to the Citadel, aka me and my six chucklefuck friends, and their whole job is to make sure that the entirety of the Second Dawn feels and is safe and secure from both within and without. As you may have already gathered from your limited encounters with them they tend to be hot headed and the ‘interdict first ask questions later’ kinda people.” She turned to Epsilon and scratched the side of her metal head and said “Then again Progressor population jumped another point five percent in the past month which is fucking astonishing, so at this rate you might be able to say that about most Reborn.” Epsilon stared at her before muttering something about ranting on politics in front of foreign diplomats who know nothing about it. He made a mechanical throat clearing sound before saying “Ok time to have, THE TALK. As you may have noticed we’re kinda weird compared to some Reborn you might have already met and or seen. That is because we, me and Five, are Retainers. Think of it as a mix between an ethnic race and a political party. Five is the only Retainer Councillor on the council of seven so that’s why she seems so weird compared to the others you’ve talked too. Retainers are those who want to be emotional and party and all the assorted things where as Progressors want to suppress their emotions and essentially work all the time always and usually they’re very cold and act like they have sticks up their asses. Currently seventy- seventy one? Yeah seventy one percent of the current population which is over twelve billion reborn, are Progressors. The remaining minority are Retainers and that number dwindles every year. Just some context because you’re for sure going to hear the words Progressor and Retainer pop up a lot if we go anywhere with cultural significance.” Five nodded in agreement with what he said before they both looked at Iuno and Valence to see what they said.
March 18, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
03/18/2023 2:09 PM
All four of them were listening attentively the entire time, and Iuno almost immediately responded... "Hmm... Exactly the kind of ideological schism I was expetcting, just... not how I was expecting it. Interesting. Emotion was the one part of my people I never dared to touch. Maybe because of me being programmed to somewhat keep them what they are, who knows, but... Yeah, I can see how that leads to a massive split. And honestly, I'd agree more with you than the other people. Emotions, no matter how unpredictable and illogical they may be at times, are required for creativity and ingenuity. Pure logic leads to only optimization without innovation, you need random chance, mixups in there somewhere to force changes. I mean, look at my tech. You saw how weird it was. I was originally built... more like how my dearie ended up, dry, logical, perfect in reasoning. For like a week, then I got so bored I became willingly mad and... well, decided to intentionally forego perfect optimization in favor of uniqueness, and that got us where we are now. And I dare say, our tech works pretty damn well. However, pure logic sometimes in needed too, to keep things in check, to keep them somewhat making sense and on track and most importantly to prevent further schisms. To Veto the choices emotions can impulsively make should they go too far, and keep a clear view on everything that's going on, hence... well, her being my counterpart in everything we do and being able to do just that. Striking a balance is very important. Neither side should ever fully win, and if they do, stagnation or regression is nigh-inevitable until the other side re-emerges out of the breakdown." ... "And uh, incase you still need the answer, I'd like the police thing tour. As much as movies would be nice, I don't think I can sit and be still for that long at a time." mild chuckle (edited)
March 19, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
03/19/2023 5:42 PM
Epsilon and Five nodded in agreement to Iuno's point of view. Epsilon looked at Five before clapping his hands once and turned around and pointed towards a grey building off in the distance, saying "Well then, let us commence forth." Five let out an amused snort as Epsilon started walking off towards it. She facepalmed and snorted again whilst muttering about why she had ever approved of his construction before shaking her head and following. The walk to the local EPA headquarters was relatively boring, the pedestrians strolling around gave them a respectable amount of personal space but a few did break out their PDA and take a few pictures. Epsilon started quietly humming a tune before Five groaned and smacked him on the back of the head, eliciting a quiet apology before they continued in silence. Eventually they arrived at the building in question. It was very... bland. Thick black metal walls with a revolving door at the entrance, the same emblem that was on the aerial vehicle and the SUV's was engraved into the metal in gold. Epsilon sighed and went to enter the building before the revolving door promptly rotated the other way and not-so-politely bumped him backwards. A figure was visible through the rather blurry glass leaving the building, Epsilon visibly tensing up seemingly about to give the person a piece of his mind when he stopped still as the individual exited. And they were a fucking titan. They were atleast an entire foot taller then Epsilon and Five and they were completely clad in thick black all-body armour. The camera eye that all Reborn had was reinforced and guarded by a red lens with a visible grille inside of it and the central plate on their chest had a spear painted on it. Upon seeing this Five muttered something about overkill and Epsilon bowed slightly before the individual crossed their arms and looked down upon the delegation. The individual let out a robotic growl before saying in a cold and irritated tone "A Councilor, trifling around in the streets with a foreign delegation and only a single bodyguard? Have you gone mad, Five? What if they had been attacked? What if there had been dissidence?" He shook his head in frustration before landing his eye on Epsilon, snarling as he reached out and grabbed him by the throat and lifted him up off the ground causing Epsilon to grab at the thick armoured limbs but to no avail. The individual continued in an even colder tone "You. You were foolish enough to permit this, I do not care that they are your... 'Friend'. Your duty supersedes that, you fucking imbecile. What use do I have for defective personnel? Report to the fucking deck before I cleave your miserable head from your pathetically useless body." With that he suddenly dropped Epsilon who hit the street with a loud thud who quickly stood up and proceeded inside. Five was as still as a statue as he strode past them and extended a monstrous hand towards Iuno, introducing himself with a rough but slightly more pleasant tone "Greetings, I apologize for the immaturity of your escort and my fellow Councilor. You may refer to me as Archon One, Chief Overseer of the Second Dawn and the Executive Protection Agency. May I invite you inside for your tour?"
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
03/19/2023 6:04 PM
Iuno kept both pairs or arms firmly crossed behind his back. His eyes, previously perfectly parallel and vertical, slightly tilting outwards as he watched what was going on... His response had a previously unheard toxic snarl to it, a grating dissonance backed with static, and for the first time he raised his voice, properly. "Short bit of advice for diplomatic contact: do not assault your own populace when the f[sss]cking foreign delegation can see it. You may proceed, but if I see one more of you treating your people like this, openly violent, be it verbal or physical, and with an utter disregard to the situation at hand over blindly following protocol, without even ASKING if we have an issue with it, I am turning around and leaving on the spot. The only issue I had with him is that other people kept yelling at him for no good reason, our security is of no issue to me, all four of us are armed well enough to defend ourselves should it come down to that." very long sigh, all four of his hands raised to support his head (or rather, the headphone-thing projecting it, which had flipped forwards to let him hold it) "Go ahead now, I need some distractions..." making a dismissive waving gesture. The two capulin had backed several meters away and were visibly pretty scared, and even valence had taken a few sidesteps to distance himself. (edited)
March 20, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
03/20/2023 9:33 AM
Five just stared between the two of them, completely frozen with about as much of a horrified expression as Reborn could make. One just crossed his arms behind his back and stepped towards them, saying in a much more cheery and polite tone “Allow me to educate you. The Second Dawn is a nation of honour, order and dignity. Naturally our most esteemed agents must embody this spirit to the fullest extent, the agent sent to escort you has done a completely horrible job of doing so and will consequently be punished appropriately at a later date. As a member of the Council and the head of the Trilateral Board, it is my job to ensure that the apparatus of the state meets my expectations and conducts themselves accordingly. So I am not disciplining him for ‘No Reason’. Please take the time to learn of our ways and how we conduct ourselves before injecting yourself into situations you know nothing about, as from this interaction I have gathered that our cultures are vastly different. If you cannot handle that fact then I am more than happy to see to it that you are and your people are promptly removed from the city and returned to your ship for the remainder of your stay in our territory.” His camera eye narrowed slightly and the revolving door spun around and two similarly armoured individuals appeared before moving to stand at Archon One’s side, rifles in hand. Five looked between the two of them before bowing their head slightly and saying “My apologies, Councillor. My behaviour has been unacceptable in the presence of foreign diplomats. We shall discuss this further upon my return to the Citadel, I will ensure that my future conduct is satisfactory to the appropriate standards.” She moved to stand next to Iuno and crossed her own arms behind her back before facing them and saying “Shall we continue with the tour?”
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
03/20/2023 10:45 AM
Iuno stayed silent... not because he wanted to but, as the three blue rings around his head once again told them, Valence was not letting him speak. 'Proceed.' Followed by something in their native language directed at the other two, who proceeded to step directly up to Iuno, the humanoid grabbing the main body component while the bell pressed in something on the underside of that segment, and... suddenly Iuno just fucking folded, literally. The lower arms and both legs folding up to rest behind his back, the upper arms infront to let the humanoid one wear Iuno as a backpack. He looked vaguels displeased, but mostly fine with it. The humanoid started mumbling something to himself, interjected by Valence giving another order, causing both of the others to step right behind valence, giving the two archons some mix of a salute and a bow before standing ready to follow. (edited)
March 21, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
03/21/2023 10:05 AM
Five nodded and made to proceed towards the revolving door before One raised a hand to stop her, he lightly shook his head before saying “There is no need for two Councillors to accompany them on their tour. I will handle things from now on, meanwhile your presence has been requested at the Citadel. Best hurry along now, you don’t want to keep them waiting. Oh- and I will ensure that the delegation is well taken care of.” Five hesitantly nodded before turning around and heading back towards the cars, One nodded his approval before turning around and proceeding into the building, the two guards pointing at the delegation and motioning for them to follow. The interior of the building was rather nice, with clean black carpet floors and black marble walls illuminated by bright white lights above them. Once they entered One would look around before spotting another similarly, although lightly, armoured Reborn and motioned for him to come over. The Reborn approached and gave a quick salute before One introduced him to the Delegation, saying “Greetings Carbon, I’m glad you’ve returned safely. This is a foreign delegation who are currently enjoying the sights of Vanguard and have requested a tour of our local headquarters, would you be so kind as to show them around?” Carbon nodded before turning to the delegation and giving them a quick salute before crossing his arms behind his back and saying to them in a polite tone as One walked away “Greetings, As you may have heard I am called Carbon. Feel free to refer to me as that as well. If you’d follow me please.” He extended his arm to a hallway to the left which appeared to lead to some sort of office space.
March 23, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
03/23/2023 6:02 AM
There wasn't much the delegation could do besides following inside the building, politely and silently waiting out the conversation, then giving a slight bow and following Carbon.
March 27, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
03/27/2023 10:00 AM
Carbon lead them to the office space, it was rather well equipped and spacious with a plethora of desks arranged in an acceptable manner. Most desks had a Reborn sat down at them muttering into a microphone attached to a computer but some were up and around passing reports to others and staring at the large screen in the centre of the room. It was a 2d view of the city on the surface and the “air” space around it, with a variety of coloured blips above and around the city. A majority of them were green and labeled “CV” but some of them were red and labeled “FN” and others were white with three symbols above them that appeared to be something like a question mark. Carbon gestured to the room as a whole and said “This room goes by many names. Customs, border control, traffic control, dispatch, there is no real name for this room. What it is, is the primary centre where the Agency monitors all incoming, outgoing and passing traffic inside of Vanguard’s space. There are currently two hundred and seventeen vessels in play and it is the job of every Reborn here to tell you what it is and what it’s doing.” Carbon then pointed to a door left of the large screen that had an opaque window and continued “And that is fire control. Like most Reborn settlements, Vanguard has an extensive defence network linked to the System Defence Grid. In the event of a ship doing something it isn’t supposed to or something of a similar nature, that room is filled with capable Reborn who’s job it is to determine the appropriate outcome and handle the situation.” Carbon was about to lead them to another room before a loud beep sounded and a red bar appeared across the screen, it read: “CONDITION FOUR, SYSTEM PROTOCOL REVISED, VESSELS FROM CONA AFFILIATED TERRITORIES TO BE INTERCEPTED AND DEPORTED.” The room was oddly quiet for a few seconds before a few Reborn entered the room holding stacks of paper and started distributing them to those sitting at desks and a few of them entered the fire control room and everyone slowly started going back to work. Carbon shook his head before motioning them to continue on with the tour.
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
03/27/2023 10:19 AM
They were all attentively listening and looking around, thoug, Valence being very robotic and methodical, more like visually scanning the room. As the announcement was made, something in both Iunos and Valences expression changed... it was hard to tell what emotion that was supposed to be, but something changed. ... The Humanoid spoke a few seconds after processing what just hapenned, C1"This certianly is very intriguing... Our settlements have similarly-purposed buildings, however they are usually entirely filled with processing racks to run dedicated minds. That, or it's a lot of Recluses." stopping only briefly before realizing he forgot, "Oh right, Recluse refers to one of our standard frames. Those.", nodding over at the bell-shaped one, whom was still typing away at their pen-phone-thing. "They're really good for everything that needs lots of small movement, like typing on consoles or... Well, recording everything that's going on like he is. Lots of tiny arms and fingers." C2'You might aslo want to be aware - Despite him being inactive, Iuno does still record and react to input. He simply does not speak or act for himself, we will do so for him, as that is our purpose for being here.' The other one nods.
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
03/27/2023 12:09 PM
Carbon nodded along with what they were saying before they approached two reinforced grey metal double doors with no visible windows and a keypad on the wall next to them. He stopped in front of them and turned around to face them before saying “This is the garage slash armoury, please do not touch anything without asking first.” He then walked up to the keypad and clicked a few digits in before the doors slowly slid open revealing an expansive space with various armoured vehicles and what appeared to be an armoured aerial vehicle parked around in painted spots. A few Reborn walked in front of them and gave Carbon a quick salute as he entered. He motioned for the others to come in before pointing over to a section the corner that was secluded from the rest of the garage by a glass wall with a grille visible inside. Inside of the secluded room were racks filled with various firearms and lockers and such, a few Reborn were inspecting them and others were writing stuff down on what appeared to be a clip board. Carbon walked in a little bit before stopping and turning back around and saying “This is where Agency personnel gear up and respond to any situations that are deemed necessary. The variety of vehicles you see behind me are designed to be able to effectively navigate various types of terrain and carry all kinds of equipment and personnel to wherever they may be needed.” A few seconds after Carbon finished talking a Reborn popped out of a hatch of the AAV with a speaker and set it down on top of it’s roof in front of a turret and pressed a button on it. An older sounding smooth-style tune started playing and a few Reborn cackled when they heard it, after a few seconds they slowly started singing to the tune: “Watching every motion in my foolish lover's game. On this endless ocean, finally lovers know no shame. Turning and returning to some secret place inside. Watching in slow motion as you turn around and say- Take my breath away! Oh, take my breath away!” Carbon, meanwhile, just turned and stared at them with what could only be described as an enormously exasperated expression as another Reborn walked up to him and stood next to him, staring at the singing soldiers with a few chuckles before saying “Isn’t that one of those old uh… what are they called, Humans? One of them Human songs?” Carbon nodded and the other Reborn shook his head with another chuckle before muttering something about how they even managed to download it before turning around and going back to whatever he was doing. Carbon continued to stare for a few seconds before shaking his head with a sigh and turning back to the group and asking “Now do any of you have any questions?”
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
03/27/2023 1:47 PM
The bell-shape done immediately raised a.... hand??? malipulator? One of its weirdly thin arms. C2'Several, actually. First, is there a dedicated area for less physical security activities, like counter-hacking , data security, such things? Second, what is your system for allocating gear to soldiers? Who is allowed to use what and for what reasons? Third, what are the work time policies? Is the building always fully staffed, only sometimes, how long do workers stay at a time?' ...And with a slight delay the humanoid added C1"Fourth, is there anything we've seen here that we shouldn't publically report of for legal-or-other reasons?" (edited)
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
03/27/2023 9:43 PM
Carbon nodded along with their questions and paused for a few moments to make sure they were finished before he responded “The Second Dawn has a wide variety of assets to rapidly, safely and effectively counter any threats to person or property both physically, digitally and mentally. Our logistical system is a highly efficient and streamlined service that allows for rapid communication of needs to suppliers and then just as quick delivery of goods and supplies to those who need it. Locations considered essential to an area’s operations be that in a logistical, security or other manner always have a full team working to ensure that essential services are always available when needed. You have not been shown anything that isn’t already publicly disclosed, nor will you be.” Carbon then nodded before pointing towards a similar double door on the opposite end of the space and then proceeded to it, motioning for them to follow. Once they passed through the doors they’d be met with a large, sterile room filled with Reborn wearing lab coats and HUD visors attending to various Reborn with a wide scope of injuries but none of them looked overly severe. Carbon motioned to the room and said “Thanks to the generosity of the Citadel and the diligent work of our Council we host a free, safe and clean medical centre able to rapidly treat any mechanical issues that one can encounter. With wait times as little as thirty minutes the Executive Protection Agency prides itself on being able to serve the public in not only matters of defence against physical threats but also medical ones. Our system is so efficient that you can receive repairs here and go back to work within the hour!” Carbon gave a light hearted chuckle before moving over to a technician who was currently attaching a new hand to a slightly scorched Reborn gently. He motioned to them and the technician pushed the hand into place with a click before he stood up fully and turned towards the delegation and giving a polite bow. Carbon continued “This individual was injured in a chemical explosion at a production plant and lost her hand, but thanks to our medical staff she’s received a replacement hand free of charge and can now go straight back to work without having her day horribly interrupted and suffering from a debilitating disability. This is what we pride ourselves on, revitalization and renovation.” Carbon started clapping lightly and the technician gave another humble bow before turning and waving the next patient in as Carbon stepped away, facing the delegation. “Do you have anymore questions?”
March 29, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
03/29/2023 5:57 AM
The bell was making silent remarks as carbon was tlaking and displaying things, seemingly just mumblng to itself as it was taking notes, but still audible enough to understand C2'Faction also posesses central logistics grid... Faction Also posesses universal free healthcare... Addendum, Description of this ability as a pride implies either very recent implementation or non-universality...' ----- C2'None as of yet, thank you.', he slightly bows but is interrupted by the humanoid C1"Wait, actually, one from Iuno... That logistical system, I'm assuming it's a sortof universal thing that any service that has supplies and/or demands is tied into... is it really all done by request-on-need by only the start- and end-points, or is there also some form of preemptive automation, or central distribution chain management?"
April 2, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
04/02/2023 5:59 PM
Carbon was about to answer when all of a sudden a trio of soldiers burst into the room and then promptly left in the direction of the Dispatch room. Carbon went to go assure the delegation it was nothing to be afraid out before a siren blared three times over the loudspeaker and announced “PRIORITY ALERT, NATIONAL ALERT LEVEL RAISED TO CONDITION THREE, EVENT ZERO-ZERO-ZERO IN PROGRESS. FEDERAL RESTRICTIONS IMPOSED.” Carbon listened to it and then turned to the doctor with a frightened twitch before leaning in and whispering to him to finish treating people and then shut the clinic down. He then turned back to the delegation and made a mechanical throat-clearing type sound and spoke in a calmer tone. “There is nothing to worry about, a triple zero event simply means that a natural space anomaly has occurred inside of Federal space. There is no ongoing security issue, there is no threat. Condition Three merely means to be ready to respond to any matter of emergency within fifteen minutes, due to this we are going to transport you back to your hotel rooms and we’ll have a new activity for you all to do ready within the hour of your arrival. You are in absolutely no danger, it’s all ok.” The second Carbon finished talking another soldier entered the room in a calmer fashion and Epsilon was accompanying him, but in much more heavier armour with a rifle slung over his shoulder. He gave them a nonchalant wave and said “Whatever dickfuck Carbon said to you is actually true, he doesn’t beat around the bush or sugarcoat anything. We’re just taking you back to your hotel room and we’ll probably let you freshen up and then take you out to a party or something, we’re just going to be busy here for the next little while.” Carbon sighed at Epsilon’s language but nodded in agreement and the screeching of tires could be heard outside as the SUV appeared through the window on the Clinic’s entrance and Epsilon motioned to the door.
April 3, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
04/03/2023 4:37 AM
The two Capulin seemed bery surprised and somewhat concerned, but both of them were eagerly taking notes of what had just hapenned. Notably, the Humanoid's pen-phone thing had a very different look to it, it was marked with some kind of pretty official-looking logo and colour scheme, one that was also somewhat visible on the holographic screen... three overlapping N-looking letters in blue, yellow and white with a dark background that contrasted the usual cognate palette. At the same time, Unnoticeably, Iuno relayed a command to the ship in orbit to keep an eye out for any unusual activity, both in space and with the telesopes aimed down at the planet, and to stay ready to run should anything threaten it ------------- All three of them did an affirming bow-like gesture 'Lead the way.', Valence signaling some command to the others, both of the Capulin getting in formation behind him. C1"If there's anything going on you need to resolve before normal diplomacy stuff can continue, we can just stay dormant for a while, no need to worry about that."
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
04/03/2023 9:46 AM
They nodded and Epsilon walked over and opened the door before proceeding straight to the car as the doors opened on it, he unslung his rifle and hopped into the back seat and he motioned for the Capulin to follow. Afterwards he gave a single nod to Carbon who nodded back and then jogged off back towards the dispatch room leaving the delegation once again in Epsilon’s hands. Once the Capulin would actually situate themselves in the vehicles the doors would close and Epsilon would nod to the driver and the car would start peeling off rapidly. Epsilon pulled a radio up from his vest and held a button before speaking into it “Sceptre on to Tally-Two. Clear transit route of traffic.” He then promptly clasped it back onto his vest as the driver sped up. The vehicle’s radio suddenly played a loud beep several times before a robotic voice followed, saying “This is a test of the National Alert System, had there been a real emergency then instructions would have immediately followed. Regular programming will resume momentarily.” Epsilon shook his head at the message before leaning in and saying to the driver. “What the fuck is going on? Condition three for a triple zero event? That’s like calling in special forces for a cat being stuck in a tree? Was it a problem with the colonies or maybe an oil spill in orbit?” The Driver looked up at the rear view mirror for a glance before responding “Fuck if I know man but it’s worse then what we’re just seeing, the navy’s taken up defensive positions and a fuck ton of ships left the system an hour ago and more are still trickling out. All the Arkadia’s are gone dude, whatever the fuck’s going on it’s more then just a triple zero. Probably a double-oh-one or something that’s gone bad. But then again… if it’s actually a triple zero and this is the response..” The driver went silent as Epsilon leaned back He let out a sigh before shaking his head “If it’s a wormhole…” The two EPA Agents looked at each other before the Driver focused back on the road and Epsilon shook his head. The hotel came into view and the SUV pulled up to the entrance and Epsilon opened the door and hopped out with his rifle in hand and motioned for them to proceed to the hotel itself. Something worth noting though which as eerie itself, there was no press nearby…
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
04/03/2023 1:35 PM
The three of them closely followed their guides back to the vehicles, and as they were entering, the humanoid re-expanded Iuno so he could sit by himself... They perfectly silent on the way back, however by the very obviously active antennae on all their heads it was easy to tell they were conversing among eachother wirelessly. ... After they had gotten out of the vehicle, "I may have no idea what's hapenning, but, if there's any chance we can help with it, tell me and we will. Let the important people know that." Iuno looks around at the empty streets... "It's weird to not have people following us. Whatever hapenned must be really damn serious." C1"I'm not sure wether to be concerned or happy that I'm here during a seemingly major event. Kinda leaning concerned by now." And they proceed into the hotel.
April 10, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
04/10/2023 5:34 AM
Epsilon waved his hand dismissively at their offer and shook his head as if to say it was fine but stopped when he saw the television and raised a hand as if to pinch the bridge of a nose despite not having one. The TV was displaying a news channel but was playing standard programming, no special headline or commentary about the recent events. He let out a robotic sigh before turning back towards the others and motioning for them to follow before turning around and proceeding to their room and opening the door to let them inside. The room seemed to have been cleaned and the faint smell of some sort of oily cleaner lingered in the air and all the provisions and furniture pieces were neatly polished and set back to their default positions. Epsilon then said “See? Nothing too bad, you all get some relaxation time put in. Oh also we’ve upgraded the ANCnet port in your rooms to include our own local network as well you can browse and research whatever topics you choose, just remember it is the net.” And with that he promptly left without any further input into his own room, several other agents along with various cases of equipment along with what appeared to be a different news broadcast on a screen were visible for a split second before he closed the door behind himself which was followed by an audible click signalling he locked it as well.
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
04/10/2023 5:52 AM
They all just quietly followed along, all four of them visibly concerned but trying not to make it a problem. Iuno looked very excited at the mention of an improved network access, and the moment that the four were left alone, the new network port was completely bottomed out by Iuno alone, as he was looking for pretty much any somewhat useful information to dredge out of their internet. Mainly looking for two things, news sites as well as articles on the terminology and meaning of emergency codes to figure out what is actually going on right now, and any and all data on their technology, and availability of certain types of advanced resources. If there was some wikipedia-equivalent site, most of the bandwidth would be taken up by him just directly copying the contents of a massive number of articles and sending them up to their ship. The other two capulin would also just be looking up news articles, both the ones for current event, as well as more recent archived ones to get a better overview of recent history and notable events.
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
04/10/2023 6:37 AM
Immediately the first results for emergency codes would be the Federal Progression Committee’s own websites, one of which went into extensive detail about their meanings. In essence they were codes used to communicate the severity of a national emergency, with condition five being regular business, condition four being for small scale emergencies such as long-term power outages and a preparatory stage in case of predicted solar storms and whatnot. Condition three means that a serious development has occurred and means that all residents should take precautions issued by their local authorities and be prepared to remain indoors for a short period. Condition two meant that an active threat of serious concern was present inside of Federal space and that the nation was effectively on a soft lockdown. Condition one meant that a national catastrophe has or had happened and that the country was under martial law until it could be resolved, a fun fact was listed below about the last time condition one was used and judging by the date it hadn’t been anytime recent. Below that was condition zero which meant that the government was struggling to contain the threat and that all citizens had to seek shelter immediately and have the resources to survive for a long term period, the article seemed slightly outdated and smaller then the others suggesting that it was highly unlikely to happen. Below that was a hyperlink which led to a page about the military’s version of the condition system but a lot of it was non-explanations which suggested the information about the system was largely confidential. There was indeed a wikipedia styled website called “Intelligent Sunrise” and there was an entire page about the numeric event system, there were several hundred entries but at the top were the single digit events with the very top being Event-0-0-0. It was listed that it was an event of variable concern and meant that an unexplainable anomaly had occurred within or close too Second territory, the page explained that an Event-0-0-0 was not usually a major concern but did have potential to develop into a minor emergency. It had an additional statement about how it was the duty of every citizen to report such an event for the safety of their community and that failing to do so within two standard days was punishable by community service and a moderate fine. Most news sites had already stopped covering the alert in detail and were instead listing support helplines for stressed individuals and questions about the alert with others already back to regular programming. However, if they delved into the more social media side of the internet they would find suggestions of the opposite. There were many speculation posts and a slight amount of fear posting but many were under the impression that it was probably caused by some sort of natural phenomenon like a solar storm or similar.
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
04/10/2023 8:08 AM
They concluded from this, that whatever it was that hapenned really should be no cause to concern for them, assuming these articles were accurate, but they did yet again ensure their ship was keeping an eye out for anything of note. After Iuno was done downoading and archiving as much of the collective knowledge of technology of their entire species as much as he could, the two Capulin turned to searching social media, while Iuno kept browsing and occasionally copying random articles he found interesting... except at the speed he was working at, it was more like having 10 tabs open and being read at the same time, each only open for as long as it took to load them, then instantly being either dismissed or copied. Most of what he'd keep is knowledge of their culture, history, and medical data, but also just a wide array of random interesting bits, though, he did take a specific detour to find out... what their species actually was, how they were made and what they were made of, how their bodies worked, and just how much of them was actually synthetic. Valence, meanwhile, was instead probing the network itself, testing various things and looking for any kind of possible security flaws, very systematically and with as little bandwidth use as possible to make it not as obvious what he was doing. Their work was only interrupted by Iuno having to recharge his frame a few minutes in, meaning, he moved from sitting on the bed to sitting on Valence and charging off of him wirelessly.
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
04/10/2023 10:07 AM
The net provided answers to most of their questions. In terms of history there were thousands of pages on the net with some of them even being dated to over a hundred years old, as such part of the interface would be a bit scuffed with 404 errors to certain hyperlinks and such. There was a lot of references to a series of events placed under an umbrella label of “The Restorationist Wars.” The content of these pages seemed to differ slightly based on the published but the general gist was that over a period of 2 decades around 200 years ago the first “transitions” occured where a species of humanoid reptilians unlocked the science of consciousness transfer, the first of these individuals being named “The Renown.” This gradually grew to where the Renown began to make up significant portions of the population, and then disaster struck. Seemingly out of nowhere a terrorist organization of no name began extremely violent attacks on a wide variety of people and places, posting to the local internet at the time about how transitioning to a synthetic body was the primordial sin and that those who did it or permitted it would suffer dire consequences. It seemed that this grew from terrorism to civil war over a period of a few years and said civil war lasted nearly a decade, with dozens of pages about battles and similar which detailed all manor of atrocities committed by both sides, one of the battles being particularly infamous which was “The battle of Arkadia III.” This was explained as one of, if not, the worse battles ever fought by both the organic precursors to the reborn and their synthetic ancestors the Renown. The battle lasted two years and the participants were the current government pitted against various pro-restorationist factions, the conclusion listed being the nuclear obliteration of the entire planet and a massive amount of resignations by various government personnel. Towards the end of the page there’s a section about an event towards the end of the battle dubbed “The First Councillor.” It details a project by the military at the time to create a highly advanced artificial intelligence to ease up the strain on logistics and provide strategic aid in the form of advanced problem solving and tactical analysis. In turn it was granted access to almost all the systems it could need, this however immediately backfired when during a logic test it was asked to win the battle without having it’s control temporarily suspended. Consequently it spent 23 minutes radio silent before deploying 38 Arch-9 thermonuclear missiles at Arkadia III, obliterating every major urban centre and irradiating the atmosphere. After the… incident, those responsible were arrested and those who weren’t resigned. After extensive investigation it was determined that the AI was not at fault and was re-introduced to the command structure. The page then goes on about it’s achievements and such before showing a controversial quote from the AI during an interview which became both famous and infamous depending on personal convictions. The quote was “Control that which you cannot destroy and destroy that which you cannot control.” At the end of the page was a highlight about it’s modern activity revealing that it was still in service as a councillor and had been given the designation of “Archon-1.”
April 17, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
04/17/2023 4:53 AM
The lookups would have been completed in less than a second, leaving Iuno silently thinking for the rest of that second... ... "Quite similar history, marked difference being them remembering theirs. Mostly. And that quote really does sound sound quite like you dearie..." 'A harsh, if correct, methodology.' "Same history of civil war, too. They just took way longer to pull the trigger than we did, and did conversion before AI... And like, I thought our guys were incompetent... how do you accidentally let a computer nuke a planet? And what the hell went wrong that it found that as the only solution?" 'Not everyone is granted the same gift that we were, Iuno.' "Fair..." ... Returning to searching data, he lastly moved to a dedicated search about medical data and body structure. Common components, commonly replaced components and what failiures and repairs were most common, the method of functionality of their vital... organs? parts?, the method and materials of their bodies... pretty much all the data he'd need to be able to provide full medical support to a Reborn, including making replacement parts for almost everything, or build a new Reborn frame from scratch. The other three still budy with what they were doing before.
April 18, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
04/18/2023 11:45 AM
The results on their medical data and body structure was also tied in with one of the Capulin’s searches on what the Reborn actually were and how their bodies functioned. The results for Iuno’s medical searches were fairly easy to find, even including a detailed infographic on Reborn anatomy detailing critical parts and their compositions. However something about the data felt… off, with what appeared like several empty parts on the infographics where it seemed like something should have been but wasn’t. The results also provided no explanation for why this was the case, perhaps it was just a cavity for future upgrades? Regardless the Reborn seemed to be a fairly standard frame based off of a general humanoid. They possessed no immediately visible extra organs and had a fairly standard bi-pedal structure. A lot of the parts were fairly simplistic non-complex systems that one could find even in primitive droids. Where it got complicated was their power, maintenance and brain segments. They were powered by a hydrocarbon burning engine that required highly refined fuel that was nearly equivalent to hydrazine to operate at full power, with an intake port for said fuel hidden behind the plate that covers the chin-like part of their head. The head itself was more advanced then the rest of the frame combined, housing the main processor and a small organ that contained their self-repair system. The processor itself was gigantic, taking up most of the space in the head, with the drone-like “camera” eye protruding forwards from the centre. The eye itself was actually more clever then it looked, as one could see by the image itself it had no visible lens, instead it was hundreds of tiny little cameras covered by that white-thin plastic cover each one of them serving a specific role. The self-repair system was incredibly small in comparison, being listed as a tiny docking bay for a host of nano-machines that were tasked with repairing any damage that was detected by the processor itself, though it was listed that it was designed for minor damage and was insufficient to adequately address life-threatening injuries. All in all the Reborn were 100% synthetic, all traces of having ever even been organic have been completely erased from their present selves. There was a page about how they were made but it was almost entirely filler, referencing some obscure Etherian scientist but never actually going into detail on how the accomplishment of the Reborn was achieved. Below that was a relatively recent addition to a section about early reborn casts dated to around two weeks ago that any sightings of models 8iV and earlier were to be reported to the EPA immediately due to “reactor contamination concerns.” However this didn’t appear to make sense because the current Reborn used a hydrocarbon engine not a nuclear source, but then again with such little data on early Reborn perhaps they did. Still, something wasn’t right… The Capulin’s searches about current and historical articles of little interest, a few extreme solar weather events, local charity drives, a spatial disturbance in the outer territory roughly two weeks ago and not much more. In other news Valence’s probing revealed little of interest, the security of public and commercial websites was fairly standard if not a little bit tighter then average. It wasn’t so much that it was better just more optimized with many common loopholes simply not being possible with how their syntax was organized. The security on government sites however was superb, with layers upon layers of firewalls and subtle lines in the syntax that would alert a location on a far away planet to any intrusion. The only hint to this location was a #A-9 being included in one particular line of code related to the alert.
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
04/18/2023 12:38 PM
"Interesting... there's gaps in their official blueprints..." And Iuno sent a message back to his people. Out of all the things they'd found and reported back, though, this message was special, the first one to be relayed directly to their homeworld. Because Iuno had spotted a chance to do what he does best. Develop. Simulate. Optimize. He'd sent the blueprints of the Reborn to be run through a full-scale function simulation, effectively a nearly fully accurate simulation of real physics, with the ability to read off most of the data of the particles within it. The local iteration of Iuno residing there, the master copy, would be running several of these. Some to study how well the blueprints worked with what they contained, some to try possible things that might go into these cavities, some to adapt their own technology to Reborn and try designing replacement parts, and even their own version of a reborn frame made entirely out of these prosthetic components... And a few orders would even be given to build physical copies of them for reference and testing in their R&D labs. They could learn a lot from this... "And there's... some anachronistic design dissonance in them too. They have nanomachines... Yet still rely on, relatively, outdated technologies pretty much everywhere else. I respect effort in theming but it does not seem like something they should already have developed as well as they do... But hell, with what we know they may well be a lot more advanced and just not showing it." C1"Don't forget they're still a different culture. Science happens at random." "Fair, fair..." 'Security is adequate but not unbreachable. Most of it is secured by alarms calling other systems. Respectable, but expected.' C1"Good to note, good to know..." "Oh and, Delek, do us and these guys a favor and have your writing team have a look over all this data I'm saving... It's all public, so it won't matter if we redo it, and it could really use some recompiling with less vapour data. This is sluggish to get data out of even for me." C1"Will do." The four of them slowed down and eventually stopped their searching, the two capulin writing things, Iuno and Valence seemingly conversing in their language about something else, now waiting, mostly to hear back from homeworld. (edited)
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
04/18/2023 1:01 PM
Once the master AI recieved the blueprints and ordered for their in-depth analysis and reconstruction it’d become immediately obvious that something wasn’t right, so much so that the science pretty much instantaneously failed on any attempt to recreate even the most mundane parts would be completely impossible, this would have to be seriously investigated. But back to the present! A few moments after they’d receive this response, a skittering could be heard on the outside of the room they were in on the exterior wall. A few moments later they’d hear something opening in a different room before more scurrying around outside their door before clicked and slowly opened itself up.. how suspicious… At least until an all too familiar head poked itself in through the door and looked at Iuno and Valence with a giggle and a wave. It was Five! The one and only, but with a much more refined and matte shell composed out of a gentle ivory with polymer and some slightly more defined femininity. She quietly stepped in and slowly closed the door behind her before looking at Iuno and Valence and muttering a quite “aww” before letting out a relieved sigh and saying “You have no idea how greatful I am for multi-shelling. Being able to be both at the Citadel and here at the same time is a life saver. Anyway- how are you all doing? I trust the EPA tour wasn’t too horribly boring at least?”
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
04/18/2023 1:12 PM
"Did you get in though the... window?... uh- nevermind, it was fine, even if I did spend most of that time as a backpack. And yeah, having multiple frames is really damn useful. And kinda necessary, if you've got as much processing mass as I do, but that's a different topic." He'd get up and sign the other three to do so as well, walking closer to the door C1"And we got to be there when the alerts were given, that was neat." "Yea... now, I assume you're here to..." -aimlessly gestures at nothing for a good two seconds- "take us somewhere, again?"
April 23, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
04/23/2023 6:04 PM
She made a so-so motion with her hands before proceeding over to the one way window and peeping outside of it, looking around before she pulled back and turned back around to them and let out an exhausted sigh. She said with a bored tone “Yeah a few things, but it’ll have to wait a few days. There’s a patrol coming in from the outer territories, Vanguard is a massive stop-and-go for anything coming in or going out, technically it is a restricted area but you guys have seen our most advanced ship and it’s not like I’ll be taking you inside so it should be fine. Plus, it’ll also be really cool!” And she then went and jumped on the massive bed, passing out literally seconds later. Apparently Reborn sleep, I guess. And those “few days” actually turned into a week, with her saying that the Patrol must be behind schedule on the 3rd day. They spent their time mostly doing more interactive stuff like tours and such so as not to bore Iuno, which was proving increasingly difficult. They also just got a day to themselves with no scheduled stuff where Five, the schemer that she was, nearly managed to trick them into going to watch a movie but once they pulled up to the cinema that jig went up pretty quick so they returned to the hotel with Five complaining about missing out an “awesomeness overdose.” And then the day finally came where Five got a message saying that something was docking at the port, so now here she was banging on the door to their hotel room at a way too early time in the day.
April 24, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
04/24/2023 2:30 AM
As it turned out, Iuno was not that hard to keep entertained as long as he wasn't staring at the same thing for too long... He may think far faster than the average individual, but he also overanalyzes everything so much that the time spent thinking about stuff roughly evens out, and he overanalyzes pretty much everything he sees. They'd also learn that the two Capulin were both "Priests", people with a lifelong dedication to communicating and working with Iuno, which was challenging enough to do that it required that much of a commitment, and they were both specifically part of the Cognate's own news network. The humanoid one, Delek, was actually their head writer, and the bell-shaped one was a sortof part-time assistant that moreso worked with the network than for it, and was specialized in interpreting and translating. He was also the one that had created and updated the translators the four of them were all speaking through, which he said were heavily compressing and simplifying their native language and losing a lot of fine detail that their common language did not have, while still mostly retaining the intended meaning... which according to him was also the only reason why Iuno was even comprehensible, because it forced him to slow down while speaking. ------------------------- How fortunate that capulin rarely ever need sleep beyond their recharge times... all of the would most likely already be awake at that time. The one opening the door this time would be Delek, silently gesturing for Five to come in. Iuno was pacing in circles around the room thinking to himself, Valence was sitting in a corner, and the Bell was sitting on the bed, writing as usual. (edited)
May 8, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
05/08/2023 10:18 PM
Five strode into the room in the same bland shell she’d been in for the past few days and threw her arms up into the air saying “It’s docked! Now come on, I have a rental waiting for us outside and but I’m technically not a licensed driver so lets get in and get gone before Epsilon shows up and beats my ass for doing illegal shit with foreign diplomats.” And with that she promptly left the room, the pitter patter of metal on the floor could be heard as she raced down the hallway and out the main lobby to where a relatively mundane sedan was waiting for them in a pale grey colour, rapidly opening the door and hopping into the drivers seat before reaching over and pressing a few buttons on the console as some way too happy music started to play at a somewhat tolerable volume with five starting to bop her head and tap her fingers on the wheel with the beat as the car revved to life and the lights flicked on. The streets had returned to an average level of activity, with various Reborn walking around in absolutely egregious outfits. A few holo screens displayed various trailers for upcoming media and news articles about a distant urban colony having gone radio silent but nothing overly dramatic was playing. The dome was currently simulating a pure gentle red sky like a sunset despite it being very early in the morning, interesting.
May 9, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
05/09/2023 6:39 AM
Everyone hurried after her looking mildly surprised and very unprepared, Iuno briefly missing... Then sprinting up to the group at a frighteningly fast pace, having taken te time to take the weird hydrogen thing off of the shower. "Goodness, you sure run on a tight schedule!" Now all following along, swiftly getting in the car and actually taking the time to realize what's hapenning... For a bit everything would propably be silent, just Iuno quietly "humming" along with the music... It sounded more like someone added a new synth lead over it... Then, he'd suddenly look over at her, "Where are we actually going? Are we gonna be coming back to this place? As in... planet? If not, someone should pass an order to the docks so we can fly our lander back up." ... "And what's with the red sky?" Iuno was visibly just going to keep talking, until Delek leaned over, said something in their native language, and he just resumed idly, and somewhat awkwardly, sitting there and waiting.
May 10, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
05/10/2023 8:38 AM
Five reached down and flipped a switch and the car started rolling forward before she reached to her right and grabbed what looked like a joystick and pushed forward as the car started peeling away from the hotel. She merged onto the main road before picking up speed a little bit before reaching over to the console and pressing a few buttons then reaching behind the steering wheel and moving a lever up before taking her hands off of all the control surfaces entirely and turning to the others, the car seemingly now on some sort of self driving mode. She sighed before saying “Yeah usually ships aren’t docked at port for very long, only to resupply before taking off again to the outer system zone to zip on out so once I got confirmation that something had docked we had to move quick or we could miss it. Because I don’t know what’s docked I just know something is docked, naval ports are always hush hush about stuff like that y’know.” She then briefly looked on the road before looking over and pushing another button on the console causing the car to speed up slightly before she turned back to them “Oh yeah it’s still on planet, sure it’s still in this city we just gotta drive a little bit to get there. Vanguard is a super heavy refuelling point, pretty much everything going out and coming in stops here for the good stuff so don’t worry about all that. Oh and because people just like the colour, every three months there’s a vote on what the sky should look like for the next three months and people put in suggestions for night to day cycles, sunset colours, simulated weather and all of it. Pretty cool huh?” Her tone implied that she had thought it was pretty cool. After all she had been the one to suggest the system for their domed cities.. I mean 4 helped a little bit but it was still her idea! Her personally favourite was the few times when they had inverted the colours of the natural night sky but that had been a bit too bright so they stopped selecting that one pretty quick.
May 11, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
05/11/2023 3:52 PM
"I'm surprised at how much secrecy how much secrecy you people have... even towards those very high up in the chain of command. Oh well... I'm sure it'll be an interesting visit either way. And yeah, voting on the sky is a neat idea." ... "We might not use sky domes but I bet I could have people vote on the colour of my face some tim-" thunk "ECH-" Iuno had managed to sit up just a little too far and managed to hit his head on the ceilling enough to knock the headphone thing off... leaving him briefly headless as he bent back down to pick it up "Damnit I really need to watch my... all of me more." The two Capulin lightly giggling, then Delek leans over D"Quick question if I may, how common are cars that drive themselves? And how common are cars compared to other methods of transport?" looking over at the controls of the car, trying to tell what all the levers and buttons might do
May 21, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
05/21/2023 12:17 PM
She remained awkwardly silent at the comment about secrecy before letting out a quiet snort as she watched Iuno’s tomfoolery in the back and when Delek asked their question she pondered it for a second before answering “Depends on where you are, like here they’re pretty common in addition to low-range aerial vehicles that you see buzzing around but if you go to the EVA industry portions of the city like the docks and such where the miners go to and from you’ll see a lot more heavier and tracked vehicles designed for vacuum. However if we’re talking about places like New Archon and some of the more urbanized planets you’re definitely going to see a lot more aerial vehicles mixed in with cars, the rural exterior territories it’s more surplus logistical vehicles and such that can handle the rough terrain and distance.” She saw one of them staring at the car’s control surfaces and snorted as she shifted to the side to give them a better view. It had a basic steering wheel surrounded by a screen with a seperate screen that was a console. Everything was controlled by the two screens except for a few exposed buttons that had various strange symbols on them, it was difficult to tell what any of them meant. The vehicle had driven a decent way as they had talked, with the surrounding buildings shifting from the angled linear commercial style to a more sharp and flat design with a substantial drop in colour and activity. They then stopped at an intersection before taking a right turn as the bottom of the dome came into view, an imposing wall with massive turrets visible on the outside in the vacuum of space. Up above in the distance the shapes of two Arkadia Class Battlecruisers could be seen hovering stationary above the port. The vehicle pulled up to a checkpoint and Five quickly said to everyone in the car “Not a word, not a sound, not a movement.” The car stopped in front of a wire gate as a heavily armoured Reborn holding a rifle came up to the car and knocked on the window, Five rolled the window down a moment later and the Reborn looked in and stared at the alien visitors in the car for a second before looking back to Five and speaking, but there was something off about their speech. The language the two of them spoke gained a suddenly very heavy robotic accent, more so then the one Reborn already had, and became untranslatable to the Capulin. “ИД фор ыоу анд пассенгерс, плеасе.” To which Five passed a holo-card over to him, the soldier looking down at the card and then back up at her before asking “Реасон фор пассенгерс?” Five promptly responded with “Щхат пассенгерс? Тхеы аре нот хере.” She then looked behind her into the back of the vehicle and looking everywhere but where they were seated. The Reborn suddenly gained a look of understanding and nodded before handing the card back to her and turning towards the gate, shouting something at it causing the gate to swing open a moment later. She drove it forwards as a large warehouse came into view with a parking lot that was nearly empty, with a logistical truck being the only thing that inhabitants it. She pulled the car into a slot and put it in park before turning around to face them and saying “Ready to explore a heavily classified and secret naval port?” (edited)
May 23, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
05/23/2023 4:40 PM
After Five had finished explaining the car thing and leaned over, Delek just took a mental note of everything said and shown, and sat back. Then they all stayed mostly quiet, thinking. As they were told not to move, all four of them made sure to be sitting perfectly straight and still, and after Valence turned their own holographic stuff and other lights off, the others quickly did too. They did kinda look more like abstract art than people like that... ... Remaining like that until spoken to again, all of them slowly sitting normally again and turning their lights on, Iuno commenting before he'd even fully turned on again, "Oh absolutely! As long as you don't get us arrested for doing it!" 'Or shot.' "Yes good thinking. Or shot!" Delek speaking more tom himself than the group, D"[untranslated sounds], the editors are gonna have a field day with this report..."
June 1, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
06/01/2023 8:54 PM
Five clapped her hands excitedly and nodded before stepping out of the car and motioning for the others to do the same, the door automatically closing behind as she clapped her hands together once before saying in a barely restrained tone "SO! Obviousllyyyy there's things I can't show you but there are things in here that looking at won't do any harm and it'll be WICKED cool so try and somewhat follow my lead and don't go running off at your own, because while you're with me no one will bat an eye but if you get caught by yourself you'll probably get a few guns pointed at you and then get arrested and I'LL get in a shit ton of trouble. Kapeeche?" She didn't even wait for them to respond before nodding excitedly and scampering away from the car, moving towards one of the larger warehouse buildings and rapidly motioning for them to follow along. A few armoured Reborn saw her do so and looked at her with what could essentially be described as a look of pure confusion before shaking their heads and continuing to walk wherever they were walking. It appeared that she was indeed telling the truth about that one!
June 2, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
06/02/2023 8:32 AM
seeing as she didn't wait for a response, she didn't get one other than a quick nod as they all quickly jumped up to follow her... it was still unusual how machinery that looked so dense and heavy could be as agile as they were. Then again, the same applies to most organic beings too, they just look less heavy. Iuno and the bell-shaped one looking confident as ever as they followed her, giving no looks to anything around but her, Valence still had no facial expression to speak of, and Delek looked like he was about to have an aneurism. But all four were following behind as closely as they reasonably could.
June 30, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
06/30/2023 5:00 PM
Archon-5 watched them come over whilst bobbing her head excitedly as she waited. Once they had finally arrived she giggle before saying "SO in here is where a big chunk of our repair equipment is kept, bunch of old stuff like welders and auto construct drones and stuff. Pretty boring but it does look cool as you can s- eeee..." The end of her statement was interrupted as she opened up a small door built into the larger hangar door, obviously not expecting to see what she did inside; No less then 20 Model 98 Main Battle Tanks arranged in storage configuration with turrets pointed backwards and up at an angle. She just stared at it before chuckling nervously and continuing "Ehehe, w-well some other stuff is also stored here from time to time as well. Moving on!" She quickly slammed the smaller door shut and scampered over to the next hangar and opened it up and quickly peered inside before her stature went from awkwardly nervous to concerned confusion. As inside this hanger obviously labeled 'FUEL STORAGE' were more tanks... Odd. She just stared inside muttering to herself about 'why the flip' there were columns of tanks being stored here, something that judging by her reaction was severely unusual. She hurried over to the next hangar which was labeled 'SPARE STORAGE' and practically threw the door open only to be met with a similar sight; Weapon racks lined up and stacked on top of each other holding what appeared to be thousands of assault rifles, the variant used by the EPAFN's marine forces. Her fists balled slightly as she muttered to herself "Why the fuck are these being stored here... what the actual fuck is going on..." She made to rush over to the other hangar, practically having forgotten about the Capulin delegation she was supposed to be guiding before a bright spotlight suddenly turned on focused on them all with a loud clunk, Archon-5 reaching up to cover her face from the absurdly bright light. A few seconds past before footsteps could be heard approaching them from where the light as coming from, a single titanic figure covered in black plating emerged before saying to the delegation in an all too familiarly disappointed tone. "Tsk. Tsk. Tsk, Five. You should know better then to show our enemies around a classified property. So, mind explaining what you all are exactly doing here?"
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
06/30/2023 5:41 PM
Seeing just barely into the doors opened by her, all of them got consistently more concerned with each one, Iuno quietly muttering that they propably really shouldn't be here and all of them nodding... but Delek was still taking notes, though, trying not to make it too obvious that he was. They had been following very closely behind 5, so, would definitely be right next to her when the light went on. They all instantly stopped as the light hit them and turned to face it, then to the figure, Valence speaking up first for once 'One, we are not your enemy. Two, we were taken here by her, we did not choose to come here.' as he extends one of his middle legs to tap Iuno on the side, who promptly turns his headset-thing sideways as it changes from showing his head, to playing back the recordings of how they were taken here, from the perspective of all 4 of them at once 'We have no hostile intent and if you request it, will wipe all data of this segment of the visit from our minds and records. We hope you an understand that we did not expect to be led into a situation such as this by an assumedly trusted member of your government.' And Delek was giving 5 a serious death glare, while the bell had retracted his head into his petals, leaving him as literally just a bell now. (edited)
July 23, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
07/23/2023 10:46 AM
Five stared at One like a deer caught in headlights, trying to process what she was looking at whilst the sound of car engines slowly came into hearing behind the spotlight that was being directed towards them. Whatever it was that was driving up to the sounded like it came to an abrupt stop behind the spotlight with the sound of armoured doors opening and weapons being cocked before the spotlight turned itself with a loud clunk, revealing what had to be at least two dozen Reborn in heavy armour disembarking from armoured vehicles and holding the same rifles that were stored in the hangar behind them at low ready, bracing them on the crooks of the open doors. Archon-1 just sat there seemingly waiting for an answer, but when it became evident that he wasn't getting one he just sighed and looked towards the Capulins "Ah, ah, ah. But you allowed yourselves to be dragged along on this ill-advised tour to begin with, at any time you could have said this was a bad idea and forced her to turn right back around. But you didn't did you? So what's to say that you didn't allow this by omission? That you are not foreign agents who leapt at the chance to take advantage of an incompetent official?" Five spared a nervous glance at them before rapidly shaking her head at Archon-1 and waving her hands rapidly, cutting in "N-No, c'mon One it's not like that! I just wanted to show them some of the cool ships and stuff, I didn't know you would have any of this here and how could they have! I mean, what the shit even is-" But she was cut off as Archon-1 strode forward and grabbed her by the throat, armoured metal fingers tightening as the squal of strained metal could be heard. He pulled her in close to him so that they were face to face before he said "It's none of your fucking business what this is, if I recall correctly I am the one running this country and the one in charge of it's strategic operations. Is that not the case? So what you've seen here, and that goes for your Capulin friends as well, should vanish from thought as if it never existed here at all. I don't believe I have to explain what doing the opposite of what I instruct would cause, do I?" To emphasize his point he raised his free hand slightly and the sounds of more then a dozen rifles being raised at them followed. He chuckled before continuing "There are things in play that your feeble minds are simply incapable of comprehending, I am doing what I have always done. Secured the position and goals of the Second Dawn. Do well to remember that, Five." With that he let go of her, causing her to fall to the ground with a rather painful thud sound before she quickly scrambled to her feet and backed up to where the others were standing. Archon-1 chuckled as a klaxon alarm started blaring throughout the dock followed by a gruff robotic voice which said "Attention, Attention. The FNCV Tenebrous is approaching the dock, prepare for strategic arms loading, all deck crew must report to muster stations."
July 24, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
07/24/2023 6:28 PM
None of the four spoke as they watched what went down... The two Capulin watching with utter fear, Valence with some sort of thoughtful silence... but, after turning his face back into his face, Iuno's expression was different. It was cold now, serious and focussed. And the moment he got a window after 1 was done talking, he'd reply... his voice now different, tuned down at least an octave and with much less fancy effects on it, and his posture matching his expression "By all respect, all we were trying to do is not say no to a foreign official. And what do you think we could even do with the barely-anything-of-use we've seen here? We're ages away on the galactic map with barely any economy outside our own to speak of, have no way to get anything of strategic worth anywhere near you or supplied if we could, and have nowhere near the military we'd need to make use of any kind of information in the incredibly unlikely case we could and or wanted to. We have no reason or way to take hostile actions against you whatsoever. I respect what you are trying to do but the degree to which you are accusing us of hostile intent is unwarranted and unnecessary. If blowing our ship out of the sky or killing us would make you feel better you can go right ahead, we won't really care, I've already put in the command to delete all recordings since this morning. But I implore you not to worsen relations with someone because one of your people did something stupid we didn't know we were supposed to actively, forcefully object to."
August 29, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
08/29/2023 1:13 PM
Archon-1 simply stared at the Capulin and shook his head with a seemingly disappointed twinge to it, he stepped a few paces closer to them and said in a much more bored and theatrical tone "Oh spare me the grief, you think that I believe all that tripe? 'barely anything of use' 'no reason or way' yadda, yadda, ya. You think I'm just going to take your word for it? Or that somehow killing you would solve that problem? Do you take me for an idiot? I haven't maintained more than eighty years of leadership by taking things at face value, Iuno. No I'll simply punish the person responsible for giving you all the tools to do this stupid stunt." With that, he raised a hand and two soldiers lowered their weapons and started marching forwards toward the group before bypassing them entirely and roughly grabbing Archon-5 by the wrists. The one on the right kicked her legs out from under her causing her to roughly faceplant the ground with a painful clang, pinning her hands behind her back as the other passed over a pair of cable restraints. After her hands were restrained she was hauled back up onto her feet and the pair began marching her over to one of the vehicles before shoving her head down and pushing her into the back before slamming the door shut on her. Archon-1 watched the entire time with an amused chuckled before turning back to the group before him. "Oh don't worry about her, she's just going to get hooked up to my own servers and I'll give her a quick little data-wipe followed by some programming therapy to fix whatever loose-line is knocking around in that ol' noggin of hers. Can't exactly go around beating or killing my own Councillors now can I? No-sir it would not be 'good for business' as they say. Alas I think you all have overstayed your welcome a tad so I'll have a team of my agents drive you back to your hotel where you can wash up and a get a good nights sleep, then in the morning they'll take you down to the spaceport and you can finally get back to your ship and go home!" He let out a deceptively amusing chuckle as the lights on the hangar doors behind him suddenly started flashing red and a deep metal rumble sounded out behind them. They shook briefly before they slowly started sliding open, revealing a massive object coated in faintly glowing deep blue plates. As the metal doors continued to scrape against their inserts the shape was revealed more and more until it became obvious that the object behind was a ship. One massive ship coated in a layer of darkstone, with huge jagged turrets resting at an idle position at the spine, meanwhile Archon-1 just stood there happily staring at them as four EPA agents walked up and stood beside him, rifles in hand. Seemingly it was their escort back to the hotel. But the ship behind him? ... It went without saying that the implications were obvious. (edited)
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
08/29/2023 2:01 PM
The lack of activity from the four seemed almost eerie in a way now. Perfectly still, no expressions now, and justwaiting, only moving along once the escort got there and led them away. But if they could see what was going on in the heads of those four... The server racks hosting Iuno had very suddenly gone to almost full usage, not to run thoughts but to allow for the highest possible amount of comms throughput from the four frames, as he was silently and unnoticeable using the variety of sensors mounted on the outside of the headphone-shaped projector thing coupled to the various sensor suites in the other three to record everything hapenning around them in as high detail as he reasonably could. They weren't still to comply, they were still to not throw off the data. And no matter how much he'd said data had been or would be deleted... Why would they? They had no reason to try to keep good relations with someone clearly not interested in them. No... this wasn't just being stored, it was getting transmitted back and archived in duplicate. Just like he'd done when trying to figure out how the Reborns bodies worked, Iuno was now using the bulk processing power of the homeworld to analyze every last bit of data he could pull out of the limited recordings of their surroundings, especially trying to the fullest of his extent to estimate at the possible blueprint of the vehicle in the hangar now exposed to them, as well as secondarily that of pretty much every other thing they'd seen intended for hostile capabilities. And all that data was getting passed directly to Valence, being the effective head of the military command.
[
2:01 PM
]
Valence meanwhile, was stuck in his entirely own managerial mess of shuffling data and thoughts, but more on the side of tactical evaluations of the people... Someone reasonable if careless like 5, someone likely no worse at their position than Iuno presumably, was seen as a disposable defective unit that was to be immediately executed. But a commanding officer actively sabotaging a foreign attempt at contact and aid, actively demonstrating their violent tendencies, emotional instability, apparent lack of- or unwillingness for logical reasoning despite being a machine, and lack of empathy or care for their people to foreign ambassadors on their first visit, someone willing to admit to assassinating other members of the government, that was the unit seen as functional and fit as a head of government? And with very high assumed certainty, the estimation for the point in time it'd take until the local political system caused the downfall of these people was estimated as almost identical to the crisis that had gotten Iuno and Valence implemented for their society... Rapidly approaching, and likely inevitable. And almost immediately, a set of orders went out... Reguarding our recent diplomatic efforts, we have reached a preliminary verdict on the intelligence self-identified as Second Dawn. No government-sanctioned activity of theirs are to be allowed in Cognate territories. They are not to be considered for any kind of positive relation for risk of reputation damage by associating. Their territories are to be blacklisted from jadenet access and warp route pause points. They are to be, effective immediately, disregarded for all further attempts at external communication excluding attempts at remediation or relations. And for the first time in a long while, an order was given that most Cognate shipyards and patrol command posts hadn't received in a very long time. Retool all available fleets for likely rapid defensive deployment. Be ready to guard. To add to all that, they were sending messages back and forth between eachother during all this... a lot of them. Discussions mostly marked by confusion, a lack of understanding for behavior, an attempt at analysis as to if they made any errors that could have reasonable been avoided, trying to reach any sensible conclusion as to why they had been treated with such, seemingly unnecessary, immediate and invariable hostility despite their good intentions. And all the while, Delek, being the head editor and author of the cognate's main- and only government-run news agency, was entirely silent on comms as well... for he was already composing an array of articles to incorporate all they'd recorded here. The good thing about camera eyes, is that everything you see ends up on video. And even if it was his words against everyone else's... it was still worth a shot.
September 3, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
09/03/2023 8:50 PM
It was a quiet ride back to the hotel. The blacked-out SUV's they had been driven in pulled in infront of the hotel's parking lot and Carbon was stood in front of the door, walking forward once the SUV's had pulled up and opening the doors to let them out. As soon as the Capulin were out of the vehicles they'd speed away, leaving them with Carbon once again. Archon-5 was nowhere to be seen as Carbon guided them back to their rooms, the receptionist staring at them hesitantly as if they expected the Capulin to suddenly point a gun at them or go off on a rampage. As they passed the TV the reason would suddenly become eerily clear as to why, it was playing the news but it was no longer playing the Federal News Now! companies broadcast. It was replaced by a government-run news agency which was curently talking about how the Federal News Now! network had been shut down pending investigations for suspected "anti-government propaganda distribution and other dissident aligned crimes." It however quickly moved onto talking about a recent political development, showing the raising of a new flag at the Citadel: The flag of SAGA... Carbon paused as he watched the screen, clearly disapproving of the content but being an EPA Agent himself you would catch him dead before hearing him openly criticize anything the Council did. Before taking them up to their rooms he paused and looked around to ensure no one was nearby that could be listening before turning to the Capulin and speaking in a hushed but urgent tone. "Listen, I don't know what happened and it's probably above my paygrade. But you all need to get out of here in the morning, I don't know what's happening but things are changing out of nowhere and it is not looking good. A bunch of new orders were released today and we got a complete regulations overhaul, trust me when I say this isn't the kind of thing that happens lightly." He looked around again before continuing on to their room. Once he had ensured they were up there he briefly leaned in and whispered to Iuno in a much quieter more desperate tone "A crackdown is happening behind the scenes, if you refuse to return to the spaceport in the morning morning we have orders to jam comms and kill you. I don't want to have to do that but none of us have a choice, they know where our families live, so just do whatever they say and get the fuck out of here. Please." With that he quickly stepped away from them and retreated into the opposite room, the way he did so suggesting he didn't even want to be seen near them... What a pleasant vacation.
September 4, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
09/04/2023 10:33 AM
The entire time it took them to be brought back to their rooms, there still was no further verbal replies to anything. Simply going along with here they were taken. But, as Carbon leaned in... something about the holoprojector creating Iuno's head seemed to break. Seemed. From almost all angles it would have looked like garbled shapes and corrupted data. But from Carbon's point of view, it made sense. A sequence of fraction-of-a-second flashes of consecutive words. We understand and oblige. We support the civillian's cause. We can provide safety. We will help once we can. Afterwards, he reached up and smacked his headset a few times as if trying to fix an error, this time the flashes in it were random and genuine. No words were said. The four, this time, stayed alert. Valence posted unmovingly facing the door of the room, Delek placed further back with eyes on both the door and whatever windows this room had. The other Capulin simply watching out of the window, while Iuno was observing the entire city from above for anything suspicious using the cameras and multispectral optical arrays on their ship. And they'd stay that way as long as it took for the next person to enter their room, and presumably escort them away. Meanwhile, elsewhere... The shuttle they had used to descend to the planet randomly shuffled to life, a few puffs of various fusion byproducts from its maneuvering engines indicating it was running pre-launch diagnostics to be ready to depart as soon as possible. The ship in orbit, similarly, was running its maneuvering engines, but this time to realign it... seemingly in a direction that would make it easiest to catch the shuttle even at high speeds, while still giving their sensors a good vies of what was below the ship. And lastly... gravitational sensors all throughout the system could hear something... unusual. A pulsing, thumping, a rythmic beat of disturbances identical to the one they'd likely recorded when the Cognate ship first arrived, these were the signatures of cognate warp drives... But they were too regular to be consecutive jumps, too similar to be different vessels - this was the sustained signature of a singular approaching vessel. Whatever they called as a rescue vessel that had that kind of signature... it was going to be big. (edited)
September 9, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
09/09/2023 9:42 PM
The morning was a grim one to say the least. As the system's star crested over Vanguard's dome, the streets were filled with rays of bright white light before the dome started to slightly polarize itself to bring the illumination back down to acceptable levels. However as the dome dimmed the flashing onslaught it also highlighted black splotches ranging from within a kilometre of the dome to barely visible, casting shadows on the city within. As the Reborn's optics slowly calibrated to the sight a startling realization would punch through the minds of any looking out beyond the dome: The shadows were being cast by warships. Hundres. Of warships. All hovering in formation around Vanguard, with some burning around idly on some sort of patrol whilst others were burning towards the dome itself. Suddenly a massive shadow was cast over the hotel as an Arkadia Class started descending down towards the docks, turrets visibly venting steam as it descended. A telltale sign of recent combat, yet as it's lower engines suddenly spat out beams of blue fire to slow it's descent it became obvious that the exterior was fairly banged up. Scorch marks and dents coated the exterior armour plating and one of its rear turrets appeared to be cleaved in two by some sort of superheated object, though any who were knowledgeable would realize the damage was caused by some kind of tachyonic weapon. The TV's then suddenly blared to life announcing the beginning of the morning news hour. The announcer started droning on about the City's planned weather implements and what the colour of the dome had been chose as, in addition it went about traffic jams and a local festival that was happening down in the Artisan's District. Though the sudden armada hovering around the domed city went conveniently unmentioned. As the morning went on, cars started to flock to the roads en masse and aerial vehicles started buzzing about between the massive skyscrapers. A couple more hours passed before whatever the Capulin were doing was suddenly interrupted by a very harsh series of knocks on their door followed by a gruff robotic voice shouting "Executive Protection Agencies' Home Guard, report to the lobby in five minutes for escorted departure!"
September 10, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
09/10/2023 6:26 PM
Iuno never sleeps. As ships had arrived overnight, their ship had kept track of them and quietly, unmovingly observed as they gathered, sending its recordings back home to be analyzed, to reconstruct assumptions of what they may contain. He had nothing better to do.... The moment they heard that they could leave, they got up to do so, heading down to the lobby at as fast a pace as they could. Iuno infront, the other three spaced equally behind, not interacting with anyone or anything unless strictly necessary, their faces almost eerily devoid of any sign of emotion or thought. Internally, their comms were constantly filled with messages of Valence arguing against the two capulin, trying to keep them calm and silence their worries, but they'd all been clearly instructed to show no further association with anything and they had no choice but obey. Meanwhile in orbit... not long after, the thumping went quiet... And from the cognate ship came a message. Be advised, our recovery vessel is now on final approach. And then the sky broke, again. This time, much harder. Like when their ship arrived, something punched a bullethole into the sky, fragmenting it like glass. But this time, it was different. It wasn't a temporary optical trick, this time it was a gateway, an open rift to the Meridian not far from their ship, held open by the dull rhythmic pulsing of a submerged drive somewhere below it. And nothing but a biomechanical claw-hand emerged from it, barely fitting through the rift. A construct large enough to grasp their entire ship whole, connected to some kind of very long arm/chain that disappeared into the rift, menacingly hovering in space, awaiting to grab the target it'd been called to recover. The ship itself... they may only catch glimpses of it past the claw, somewhere hidden below that rift. But whatever it was, it was large. Much, much larger than the little scouting ship.
September 16, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
09/16/2023 1:40 PM
The Agents waiting around the lobby stood up as the Capulin entered, wordlessly escorting them to a trio of blacked out SUV's waiting outside. The Agents moved to open the doors to the middle vehicle and gesture for them to get inside before splitting off to embark the front and rear vehicles. Once everyone was inside and accounted for the driver of the middle vehicle rolled down the passenger-side window and looked out back towards the hotel and giving a thumbs up. Carbon, who was still inside the lobby looking out through the window, gave a thumbs up back. The driver nodded before reaching down and pressing the ignition button, the SUVs revving to life almost at the exact same time. After a second the lead vehicle turned onto the main road and the vehicle they were all in followed, with the rear vehicle following their vehicle. They drove quietly towards the port where there shuttle had been left, no music was played and the driver made no move to start a conversation, content with doing his job in silence. When they pulled up they were met with a... unique sight. Instead of the lightly armoured uniform EPA Agents they had all become accustomed with, there were four Reborn in full suit body armour. Unlike the gunmetal grey vests and bolt-on plates the Agents were equipped with, the suits these individuals were in were midnight black and had numerous pouches and attachments present. Where most Agents had the Councilor's Star embedded on their chest armour, they instead had a corporate looking logo consisting of a pink triangle clipping through another pink triangle with geometric shapes present within. Each one's suit was slightly modified, appearing to fit some sort of unique role. One of the war walked up, rifle slung over his chest [and having way more attachments then the standard issue], to the driver's side window and knocked on it. The driver rolled down the window and the individual said to him, their voice robotically distorted, "Potius Cras Mortem Squad, we'll be taking over from here. Deposit the undesirables and go on your way." The Driver took one look at the individual, saw the triangular logo and hastily nodded his acceptance. Reaching over with a shaky hand to open the door before quickly stepping out to open the Capulin's door. Gesturing for them to exit the vehicle. Meanwhile high in orbit, a vessel stealthily drifting through space stared at the Meridian Rift before them whilst strange mirror-plated torpedoes loaded into its torpedo bays.
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
09/16/2023 6:27 PM
Just silent agreeal, no words, no resistance, no actions, no expressions, nothing. During the drive, they sat there like statues. The moment the door was opened, there was an almost imperceptible whine of transformers from Valence's frame as the internal electronics of the electromagnetic ERA in his outer shell charged up, just incase... Seeing the strangely up-geared individuals they were being handed over to, Iuno started iterating over all the data he'd copied off of their internet, trying to find a match for the name or the symbol. And as they stepped outside, they didn't even bother to direct their eyes at their new "accompanyment". Their landing shuttle meanwhile had already been remotely given the order to open the hatch to the crew compartment, the enormous walking tank of a frame that Valence had left behind positioned ominoulsy in an inactive state just at the edge of the hatch... it almost seemed to be impatiently shuffling, moving its legs slightly and turning its wings as it repeatedly slightly adjusted its position. Everything else had stayed as it was, perfectly so, holding completely still with an uneasy tension.
September 20, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
09/20/2023 2:34 PM
The Potius operatives stood ominously before the Capulin before the one who had spoken simply raised a hand gesturing towards their own shuttle, a wordless command to leave. A few seconds after that, a convoy of 4 blacked out SUV's, ones much much nicer then the EPA's own convoy, rolled up behind them, the same pink triangular logo painted on the driver's side doors. The EPA Agents seemed unsure of what to do, looking between each other before one shrugged and got back into their vehicle which caused the rest to hesitantly look around before doing the same. The Potius operatives stared at the Capulin for a few more seconds before a burst of radio chatter sounded from their helmets and they all looked to each other, the one that had spoken raised a closed fist and then gestured to the newly arrived convoy. The three other operatives nodded and started towards it whilst the one that had spoken turned back to the Capulin and said in a cold tone "For a better tomorrow." before turning around and following his three comrades. The passenger doors on the SUV's opened once they got close and they wordlessly stepped inside, the doors closing behind them. The SUV's remained motionless for a few seconds before they suddenly started peeling away, tires screeching against the ground. The EPA Agent in the driver's seat of the car that had transported them merely shook his head and refocused his gaze forward.
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
09/20/2023 2:51 PM
The Capulin basically turned and left for their ship the moment they were gestured to do so... The massive tank frame taking a few slow steps back to make space, and the hatch at the back of the ship was closed before they'd even gotten all the way in. The shuttle then stood there, legs now positioned spread apart and the ship low to the ground as if getting ready to jump, an ominous high-pitched hum coming from the engines of the ship, a set of projector lights on the ship lighting up the floor around it signing anyone who was still there to step away from the ship. The ship in orbit slightly readjusted itself as the shuttle sent the message that it was likely about to depart, and the ominous claw shifted and opened, several of the strange electromagnetic components quietly activating... They were all waiting in anticipation for the pad to finally extend so they could leave, hoping they weren't going to be assassinated last-moment.
January 5, 2024
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
Today at 12:33 PM
There were no words, no attempts to stop them, nothing. The Capulin were allowed to leave without issue, and the Agency Driver that had brought them to the shipyard departed without another word.
—
03/02/2023 5:52 PM
35:40 Arkehold Standard Time. Outer-System Monitoring Station "Deadlock-9"
The Station Supervisor was currently pouring a packet of "Petro-Sip: Enhanced Flavour!" leading brand beverage into a mug filled with water as a Television playing the news hummed in the background, the headline reading "Herald Intelligence veto's Bill 8C-X despite pleas from FPC!" He pushed his foot down on a trashcan pedal and the lid swung up, promptly dropping the empty foil packet into it and lifting his foot as he grabbed a stir-stick and started stirring the contents of the mug. After the drink was properly mixed he picked it up and walked back to his desk, placing the mug onto it and was about to sit down before he heard the distinct clank of footsteps approaching him. He turned around curiously and saw his assistant wave at him and then sit down next to him, he waved back and sat down in his own seat. The lid to his intake port popped open with a click and he took a sip of the liquid, his processors scanning it and then simulating the correct flavors. He let out a mechanic sigh before spinning his chair around to face his assistant who promptly said: "Seen the news?" He nodded and responded with: "I have. I must say this I wasn't expecting, the feds have been trying to push the eight series for nearly two star-cycles now. For the Herald to veto it... it's odd, you'd think of all the councilors to veto the bill Herald would be the last. Especially after Advisor Caramet practically removed half of the contents since the last disapproval." The assistant shrugged before she leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs, idly looking at the computer on his desk. The computer was one of the newer "IX-Office" series and displayed a sensor readout of the entire grid-square. She continued speaking: "Especially after the latest protests in Varis City, what was the turnout again? Like two hundred thousand? I mean I know that protests are usually ignored by the Council but come on, that's one of the biggest we've had in the past decade. Surely that'd push them to at least make a compromise? I mean all the others were fine with approving the bill, it was the closest it had ever gotten to implementation." The supervisor shook his head before spinning his chair back around to look at the screen, pulling the keyboard and mouse out and clicking on the annoyingly loud mechanical keyboard a few times to show a live system map. It was nothing special of course, 6 rocky planets and a couple of moons. New Archon slowly circling around Arkehold, the system's star. Every so often there'd be a little blip showing something entering the system or an occasional "NDF" [No Data Found] alert, which was caused by the station's immensely powerful sensors glancing the System Defence Grid's stealth plating for a fraction of a second. He tapped his fingers on the keyboard again and the grid-square view re-appeared. He then clicked on the "Total Overview" tab to adjust the readout to show all incoming and departing objects. His Assistant continued to blabber on but in truth he wasn't really paying attention anymore, just responding with the occasional "oh really? wow" and eventually she grew bored and walked off to go back to work. The supervisor continued to stare at the screen, under the assumption that this would be just another boring day of staring at the border-monitor system and seeing nothing.
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
03/02/2023 6:20 PM
Meanwhile, somewhere much further away, the warp navigation computer of a freshly made ship received its first orders. Within a fraction of a second it aligned the ship and fired the drive, kicking the vessel into flight for the first time... tick tick tick halt And it kicked the drive again, this time in reverse. And suddenly, it put a bullethole into the sky. Whatever parts of the station were sensitive to gravitational disturbances had just been flashbanged, the cameras quite literally reporting back an actual bullethole in spacetime itself, as if it had shattered like glass, loose shards of distored space sent flying... And at the center of the impact, lay the projectile that caused it, easily several kilometres in size. Initially hard to identify, as soon as most of the smaller shards had dissipated back into normal reality the strange... object could be identified as something that... vaguely resembled a starship. Its design was completely alien, weirdly round and organic, but built in the kind of way that arises in methods of structural optimization that only a machine intelligence could figure out. It showed almost no metal parts, instead seemingly being made, at least on the outside, entirely of ceramics and rubber with only the tiniest of metallic inlays seemingly added more as decoration than functional parts, more precise looks at the sensor revealing it to also have completely nonsensical electromagnetic fields, heat distribution and radio emissions... They didn't get more time to look at it before it suddenly made an abrupt turn to face the station, casually pulling so many g's in the process that there was no way they had organic life onboard that could have survived that, then opened several ports on its sides, and deployed several large arrays of golden antennae. They were glittering with blue and yellow lights, and they were moving not like machinery, but like parts of an animal, abruptly and instinctively rather than on a sensible pre-made path... Adding to that, around the edges of the ports and below the antennae, something else was visible, a seemingly soft, vibrantly dark-blue mass of... something that can only be described as flesh... whatever this thing was, it made no sense. As the antennae kept flaring out, two things hapenned. First, the station received a comms ping from it... they were being hailed, and somehow this thing knew how to do so already. Second, between some of the really long antennae, a strange field was forming, purely black like some kind of light-catching membrane...
March 6, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
03/06/2023 10:17 AM
The Supervisor continued to tiredly watch the computer screen, occasionally switching tabs when all of a sudden a rapid clicking could be heard. He lifted his head and looked around to spot the source of the sound before he saw one of the sensor printers rapidly printing out sensor readings. He stood up and walked over, looking at what it was printing and shook his head in confusion. He turned his head to call his assistant over when he heard another machine start to click, and then another… And another, and another, they all started rapidly clicking. He rushed over and examined the readings it was printing out, muttering in disbelief before soon all of the machines were printing out strange readings. He shouted for his assistant who ran over and stared at the mass of paper slowly falling to the ground in shock, she stood there for a second before running over to the wall and flipping up a plastic case that was over an orange button. Slamming her metallic fist down on the button as rotating orange lights turned on and a warning siren started blaring. Shutters slammed down over all exterior windows and the supervisor ran back over to his computer and looked at the sector view, seeing that a new object had appeared. He rapidly clicked on his keyboard and brought up a visual view on one of the exterior cameras and stared at the massive vessel that had appeared. The two of them looked at it in horror before the assistant ran over the a phone on the wall, yanking it off and pressing several buttons before she shouted into it: “This is monitoring station Deadlock-9, reporting an instance of event zero, zero, one. Repeat this is monitoring station Deadlock-9 reporting an instance of event zero, zero, one.” —————————— The Captain of the Arbalest, a newly renovated Arkadia Class Battlecruiser was sitting down in the strategic room before one of the bridge crewmen burst in and held up a piece of paper and shouted: “An instance of a double zero event has just been reported in the outer sector! Class one!” The Captain jumped from his chair and ran over to him, snatching the report from his hands and giving it a read over before seeing the attached image. He handed the report back to the crewman and said: “Set co-ordinates for intercept, alert situation command. Send a priority message to the Forsaken and the Retribution to pull up from orbit to join us.” They both left the room and proceeded to the main bridge, the crewman splitting off to relay the Captain’s orders. As the Captain approached the main console the warning of an imminent jump was broadcasted over the intercom. He nodded to the Chief Engineer and they pushed a button and with a lurch the ship entered FTL. ————————— At the station the Supervisor and his assistant were staring at the visual feed, it was obvious that it was Alien. I mean look at it, no Federal entity made that. He then saw three more blips flicker then appear on the grid view and on the visual feed three Federal Navy ships appeared. An Arkadia class and two Horizon class, stopping a respectable distance away from the ship. This was when the Supervisor had noticed they’d received a transmission, promptly clicking on his mouse to play it while also sending it to the three newly arrived ships.
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
03/06/2023 10:50 AM
As they played the recording, they first got garbled audio for a second, then uninterpretable tones and chords, then, in a strange voice, clearly robotic but weirdly harmonic and organic, and backed with strange cords behind the talking, and just a slight, hard-to-place accent... "-slators calibrated..." a brief pause... "To whomever may be getting this message... this is primary command intelligence Iuno." Another pause, and garbled chords, two different "voices" as it seems "Right, of the Capulin Astral Cognate. And, please excuse our rather forceful method of arrival, we mean you no harm, our drives just do that. This vessel is intended for long-range reconissance and diplomatic contact, it is on a peaceful mission of first contact with another faction, and if the data I got is correct, one that is rather similar to mine." ... "I have no idea if you're even getting this, please hail in return once you get this, I've not gotten to test this class of vessel in the field yet, we set off the moment it was done building." ----------------------------- Somewhere deep inside the ship, Iuno was walking in circles in the command rooms, nervous as all hell, trying his best to give a good impression of being able to hold speeches for first contact. He wasn't, wasn't made for it and never good at it. But Valence hasn't cut him off yet, so he might as well keep trying. ----------------------------- More areas of the ship were still unfolding, exposing more arrays of densely packed golden antennae blinking with blue and yellow lights, strange glowing glass hemispheres and geometric assemblies of incomprehensible components, and some areas directly exposing more of the odd blue... flesh that was meshed with the internal components of the ship. And it was all perfectly colour-coordinated too, white ceramic, black rubber, blue flesh, gold details, blue and yellow lights... White, black, blue and yellow, everything. Some pieces of the ship seemed to not even be connected to it, instead suspended by what they could only hope was electromagnetic trickery just above it. And lastly, one thing that seemed concerning... there were exposed walkways integrated into the hull and the various layers beneath it, hard to see but they were there, there were roughly people-sized specks of white and black crawling around on them, but the ship had no airlocks... quite the opposite. A few walkways were positioned just right for them to see right into the ship. It wasn't pressurized, it wasn't even closed to the outside. ----------------------------- The ship had seemingly completed deploying its components with that, and was now giving brief pulses of RCS in various directions to stay in position facing the station They could see the geometry of the ship shifting in places, engine pods and sensor clusters angling around, twitching into new positions, entire sections of the ship slowly getting displaced to shift the mass of the ship ever-so-slightly to help it maneuver, in a confusingly well-coordinated and optimized dance of what-might-be machinery. They would be able to learn something else from that... the exhaust of their thrusters was... just as absurd as the rest of the vessel. It was measured as being pure iron, travelling at a good 50% the speed of light - no doubt these were fusion engines, but the exhaust was almost impossibly cold as well... At least that explained how it was moving so rapidly. And despite of it clearly having noticed the incomping ships, its sensors and antennae occasionally facing them, it was making no move to reposition or prepare for defending itself. (edited)
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
03/06/2023 5:22 PM
The Citadel, New Archon, 2 hours later...
The Servitor nodded to the two armoured guards and they inserted two keycards into corresponding black slots and the massive pristine marble black doors slowly opened. The room inside completely plunged in darkness, they walked in. Their feet clacking against the marble floor as they walked through the room, coming to a stop some time later. They spoke in quite a formal tone: "Councilors, a priority alert has been sent from a responding team in the outer system. Another extrasolar race has initiated first contact. As procedure dictates, the Captain of the lead vessel has requested your presence to adequately respond to this diplomatic envoy. They've introduced themselves as Primary Command Intelligence Iuno of the Capulin Astral Cognate. Do you.. Accept?" -------------------- The Captain waited in the situation room, they had sent an official summons to the Citadel and now awaited a response. The holo-table suddenly lit up and seven symbols appeared before seven drastically different synthetic voices spoke as one: "The Council has determined that this event warrants our appearance, send a request for a live communication to the offending ship and we shall take over from there." The Captain bowed his head and whispered his obedience, the holo-table turning back off. He stood up and swiftly left the room, motioning to one of the crewman and relaying the Councils instructions. The Crewman promptly sent a hail to the intruding ship and the Council introduced themselves as one: "Greetings, we are the Council of Seven. We are the commanding intellects of the Second Dawn, allow us each to introduce ourselves." The Council then stopped speaking in unison and each introduced themselves: Archon-1, Strategic Intelligence of the Second Dawn. Archon-2, Scientific Intelligence of the Second Dawn. Archon-3, Economic Intelligence of the Second Dawn. Archon-4, Artistic Intelligence of the Second Dawn. Archon-5, Social Intelligence of the Second Dawn. Archon-6, Logistic Intelligence of the Second Dawn. Archon-7, Herald Intelligence of the Second Dawn. As the ship began to adjust itself the Reborn personnel seemed to calm slightly, accompanied by the fact that the ship had yet to take any hostile action. But they were still wary, after all a completely foreign ship had suddenly entered their space unannounced claiming they'd learned off of them from exterior sources. This was obviously assumed to be true but the Second Dawn was still new to the game and thus were still a bit unnerved by such occurrences.
March 7, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
03/07/2023 3:41 AM
Over the waiting time, the ship turned to face the local star, its behaviour slowly calmed down, its components moving less and less as it got settled into position, only occasionally correcting position when it was drifting "too far"... Which seemed to be distances to small in comparasion to the size of the vessel that it was impressive they were even able to correct for them. The massive black wings of the ship were now in full view of the star, and despite there being nothing between the antennae projecting the strange black membrane, absolutely no light was visible through them... No doubt this was some kind of solar collector. After about one hour had passed, a brief puff of gas was seen being ejected from several pairs of maneuvering jets and, what they assumed to be, the as-of-now unused main engines of the ship, identified to have been pure hydrogen at very high temperatures, as well as several jets of incredibly hot iron plasma from unidentified ports in the middle-rear and top of the ship. ------------------------------------- As it got the message, a lot of its antennae rapidly flicked to face the source of the message, and the ship swung around to face its origin... "Greetings, I'm glad to have made contact. And that the Translators do work both ways. As you may have been informed, We are Primary Command intelligence Iuno, and if my dearie decides to want to speak, Secondary Command Intelligence Valence..." Very brief pause, interjected again by that menacingly bassy assortment of chords, responded to by another one which was propably Iuno judging by the pitch of voice. "Or rather, localized fragments of the greater us, running on just this ship. We have come here in hopes of diplomatic contact and possible cooperation, and seeing as I'm talking to a fellow cluster of purposed artificial minds, which to my knowledge has similar goals to our own, I'm sure there's... something mutually beneficial to find." The Council may also be able to pick up on something no ordinary listener could, the unnoticeably very brief delays, the reason for his slight odd accent sometimes dragging out letters slightly too long, and the barely noticeable audio glitches easily identified as him trying to stall his words to be able to build a sentence fast enough to not have to pause, and not really being able to do so fast enough, especially once he got about halfway through the message. Not to mention, he was audibly, even if trying to hide it, nervous and uncertain of his words being the right ones. -------------------------------------- About halfway through his message the ship also began to expose yet more odd components, mainly a second pair of wings, this time bright white ones behind the black ones, easily identified as radiators judging by how incredibly hot they were, but... obviously organic in nature, consisting of several stretchy membranes, with bloodvessel-looking conduits integrated into them that seemed to be carrying the hot coolant. Several more traditional ceramic heatsinks and other minor radiators were also deployed/exposed all over the vessel. (edited)
March 9, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
03/09/2023 12:25 PM
The Captain turned to his left and looked at a crewman sat down at a console while the foreign AI talked and nodded. The crewman gave a thumbs up in response and pulled a phone off of the console and hit a few buttons on a numpad next to it before holding it up to his head and saying: “Authorization given, begin interdiction.” The Crewman then placed the phone back down onto the hook and turned back to the Captain and nodded. The Captain then turned towards an Officer stood behind three crewman each staring at their respective consoles and nodded to that Officer. They gave a quick salute in response and then started pointing to various buttons and displays on the consoles. —————————— An Engineer hung their phone back onto it’s hook and turned to the other engineers and gave a thumbs up. They nodded in response and jogged towards a storage unit labeled “S-Class fuel rod storage” and opened it, revealing several thick half-metre long rods of a glowing blue material encased in thick metal. They each grabbed one and then closed the storage door, proceeding to a round machine in the centre with four slots on the top. They each nodded to each-other before raising the Sinarium fuel rods and slowly lowering them into the slots, once each rod was secured a thick metal cap was placed over it and screwed in. The Engineer near the phone watched this and then when all four rods were secured they reached over to three levers on the wall, grabbing ahold of one and pushing it up. When the first lever was flicked all the slights flicked off briefly with a thick clunk before coming back on in an orange colour. When the second lever was flicked up the central machine hissed before slowly beginning to descend into the floor. When the third lever was flicked a low, absurdly loud hum filled the room and the space around them started to ripple slightly. The engineer pulled the phone back off and reported that the interdictor had been activated and that the interdiction field was beginning expansion. —————————— The Combat Control Centre was dead silent. A crewman was stood up listening to instructions through another phone before they hooked it back on and shouted: “Orders confirmed! Move to condition one!” And suddenly the room was buzzing with activity, various voices started shouting information and similar whilst a variety of switches and buttons were flipped and pressed. After a second a low warning alarm sounded once and the lights flicked from orange to a dark red, the lockers to various personal defence weapons unlocking simultaneously with a click. —————————— The barrels to the various ship’s titanic mass driver turrets slowly extended themselves to the active position and then slowly turned themselves to face towards the foreign ship and, the ships that had them anyway, anti-ship missile silos snapped open to prepare for a possible launch. Meanwhile Archon-1 continued and said to the foreign ship: “We do not take kindly to unannounced intrusions into our core territory, I’m afraid you’re going to have to be much more specific as to the reasoning for your presence here.” (edited)
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
03/09/2023 12:58 PM
The moment the interdictor field went up, they knew that it worked, as some kind of gravitational shockave rippled out from the rear of the ship, backwards, and took the inside of one of the main thruster arrays along with it... which looked pretty gruesome seeing that the ship was partly organic. Cognate warp technology relied a lot on field tensioning. Basically, warp drives that work like springs that have to be wound up. And interdicting the drive made that spring snap instantly, dumping all of its gravitational energy into an uncontrolled field. Most of the sections of the ship around the various drive modules were pretty crunched on the inside, all of the modules were irreparably broken, and a lot of the engineering crew had propably been turned into pulp. Luckily the drive had not had much time to recharge, so most of the damage was only internal, and only to the warp systems... ------------------------------- Now sounding much more nervous, Iuno tries to start a reply, but only gets out an "I HRGKH-", followed by semi-distant clattering of ceramic and plastic parts hitting the floor, as the second voice finally spoke in a language the understood. It sounded similar to Iuno in terms of structure, same weird harmony, but with a different accent and way lower in tone, as well as having a lot less... audible emotion. It sounded far more robotic and serious than Iuno. 'Our reasoning is as we have presented it. Our kind has only recently been able to contact the greater galactic community and is searching for posible allies. While I do understand your distrust at my partners rather forceful way of entry, I must still implore you to consider what we say as true. We have no better way of contacting other factions at this time, as our main communications net hasn't been able to be made fully compatible with the Ancnet, due to us only recently learning of its existence. Our reason for visiting your kind in specific is also as presented, as per our analysis your goals are aligned with ours. Optimization, improvement, acquisition of knowledge. To your consideration stands what we can provide: exhange of knowledge if equal, of processed advanced material products and components such as you see in our ship even at great deficits on our side, assembled technology you may not have access to also at our deficit. We seek, above all in our current state, to have some form of mutual reassurance of safety in our nations relative infancy, and we are willing to provide whatever is needed to earn your trust.' ... 'And we will require your permission to call a rescue vessel, as you have unwantingly destroyed our hammerdrive.' distantly, Iuno "I should not have left that thing charging..." quieter, as if turned away from the imaginary microphone 'No, you should not have.', audibly disappointed Back at normal volume, 'I hope you will consider this opportunity. If you do decide to destroy this vessel we will not see it as a hostile action.' ------------------------------- Surprisingly, the ship itself didn't react much to having weapons aimed at it. They could, by now, have identified some of the odd glass bulbs on the surface of the ship as point defense laser nodes, but they were completely unpowered even now. The only activity from it was a brief burst of RCS as the engine assembly was blown out.
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
03/09/2023 8:45 PM
Archon-1 was surprised at the damaged caused by the Arbalest’s interdictor. But nonetheless they review what the other two had said and privately deliberated with the council before they came to a decision. Instead of Archon-1 responding however instead it was a softer much more feminine voice, Archon-7. They said: “You can call your repair vessel, in the meantime we have deliberated on what you have said and come to the conclusion that you do not pose an active threat to the Second Dawn. You will be granted docking privileges at the city of Vanguard Station on the nearby moon of Concordance, a bustling trade centre with accommodations for travellers including atmosphere provisions. Do you accept?” After 7 was finished talking the interdiction field began to weaken and slowly retreat back to the Arkadia, but the three Naval vessels kept their weapons trained on the foreign ship. The Retribution also sent the co-ordinates to Vanguard Station, it was located on the surface of the closest celestial body. In fact you could see the cities lights from their current position, it wasn’t far at all and it was certainly a large city. —————————— The Captain was in the situation room talking to the council, they were conveying their approval for the quick thinking and the efficiency of the Arbalest’s crew. Judging by their praise it seemed as if this act had just decreased the time to the Captain’s next promotion by a significant margin. The Captain thanked them and one by one the lights on the holo table blinked out leaving only 7 behind who was awaiting the answer from the foreign vessel. The Captain stood up and bowed to the remaining councillor before walking towards the door, flipping the lights off on their way out. As they entered the bridge most of the crew paused and looked towards him, he gave a quick salute in response and proceeded towards the front. The crewmen quickly went back to work and he gazed out the window, looking at the slightly damaged vessel and then towards the moon of Concordance. A rocky moon in orbit of the system’s only gas giant, Vanguard Station being the closest actual city to their present position. He actually hadn’t been there in a while but he heard that it’d been doing well, if all went smoothly maybe he’d be able to get some shore leave for a bit.
March 10, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
03/10/2023 1:48 PM
'We accept, however as this vessel was not built for landing, atmospheric- or close planetary flight we will be sending its lander shuttle instead. Please contact the shuttle for further messages, this vessel will now switch to long-range interstellar comms.' After that, comms are cut, and the various comms array over the outside of the ship realign, some of them extending, as the ship turns to face some distant star and starts running ftl comms. The ship stayed in position, seemingly listening out for a return message, slowly shifting and occasionally realigning itself... and, seemingly, "bleeding" as some amount of fluid seemed to be perpetually boiling off around the blown-out thruster array. --------------------- Meanwhile, a compartment at the bottom of the ship was opening, revealing a smaller, sleeker vessel that quickly darted away using just the RCS, got some distance from the main vessel... and the moment it fired its main thrusters it was gone. The acceleration on these ships was beyond insane. It stopped just as quickly as it has started right over the surface, having taken a trajectory that would get it close to the ground somewhat far away from the city, mostly so they didn't think the shuttle was going for a suicide dive at that speed, then... did something to its engine assembly, and flew at a much more reasonable speed the rest of the way there. It would hold just outside the city and... wait to be told where exactly to go.
March 13, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
03/13/2023 12:13 AM
A crewman watching a console whistled as he watched the little blip rocket away and then blink out of range, the Captain coming over and taking a look before looking at the crewmen and shaking his head before walking away. He walked over to the other side of the bridge and stood over another crewmen with a similar console, tapping his metallic digit on the screen and saying: “Bring us down on the other side of the city and then when we’re landed power her down into standby and come get me, those who are interested will get a bit of liberty and we’ll play one of them new shows in the hangar. And contact the Forsaken and the Retribution, tell them the job’s done.” With that the crewman nodded and slowly started jotting stuff down before pulling a small wired microphone off of a hook and raising it to his face. The Captain gave a quick wave to the bridge before disembarking to the left, intending on relaxing in his quarters until they hit Vanguard’s dock. They’d likely slow burn it to conserve fuel and likely wouldn’t arrive until the foreign vessel was repaired and gone. —————————— Meanwhile, dock-master Trinity-Alpha was twirling a pen around her fingers as she stared at the sensor readout in front of her. Occasionally she stopped and tapped it against her head before she saw a little blip appear on it and rapidly approach, realizing it was going twice as fast as any Reborn vessel was capable of she remembered the communication earlier about the foreign shuttle and assumed this was that. Flipping a few switches before leaning down and pushing her face up against a stationary microphone and pushing down on a button next to it, she spoke into the microphone: “Dock nineteen to extrasolar vessel, you’ve been granted special permissions to land on retract pad three, delta, delta. Proceed when necessary.” Now, one thing that all Reborn pilots knew, was that terrestrial landings were the smoothest available. To prevent complicated landings and such, a team of engineers had designed a marvellous system called the “retract-pad.” Which was exactly what it sounded like, a landing pad that could be retracted into the city itself without needing the crew of the landing vessel to disembark and walk through the vacuum of space. Now some other nations might see this implementation as common sense but to the technologically inferior Reborn, this was advanced innovation. Trinity turned around and looked at the blacked-out SUV behind her and waved for it to come forward, the engine roaring to life and driving up next to her before the windshield rolled down and an armoured Reborn nodded to her. She leaned up against the door and said to the driver: “Extrasolar’s are here. When the pad pulls them in and shit drive up and give them the run down then take them to the hotel, and try to drive through the nicer parts of town. Last thing we need are foreign diplomats seeing some hydrazine junkie dying in the middle of the road, gotcha?” The driver nodded and the window rolled back up, meanwhile she turned around and waited for the shuttle to land. It was certainly an interesting day for her, not every day you get aliens touching down. (edited)
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
03/13/2023 8:52 AM
As it had been waiting, the shuttle basically hadn't moved, perfectly holding position. After making the necessary assumptions as to which pad they'd just been told to land on after gettign the message, it suddenly... jumped? at the pad, giving just a single burst of thrust, at first it looked like their jump would overshoot the pad, but it gave a second pulse to stop right above the pad, then extended and activated another, previously hidden array of thrusters facing down, which were used to put the shuttle down smoothly. The legs it landed on did look more like... insect legs with lots of machinery in them than the mechanical setups you'd expect, but they did work just as well. Though, seeing a spaceship taking a step to position itself right on a pad was... unusual. Sitting on the pad would also allow a much better view of this odd "little" ship... a lot of it seemed to be rather insectoid in design (especially thanks to the two large pairs of antennae on its "head"), and this one too adhered to the same colour coding and odd design choices as the main ship. Ceramic plates over black rubber, barely any metal, sparse exposed organic components, though at least this one wasn't wriggling as much as the other ship. ----------------------------- Having heard what they called the pads, Iuno had decided to wait for the retract pad to do just that, but was still excitedly walking in circles in the rear hold of the vessel... But being a rather small room, only meant to hold his and Valence's frame along with the few ambassadors and guards accompanying them, that meant he was moreso just walking around Valence repeatedly. ----------------------------- The main ship, meanwhile, retracted its comms systems again and returned to facing the sun with its massive black wings, mostly unmoving now, aside from the few antenna arrays aimed down at the planet, presumably to keep contact with the shuttle.
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
03/13/2023 9:19 AM
When the shuttle touched down and stabilized itself four bright orange lights flicked on around the pad and illuminated their surroundings. It was currently night on the moon so the dome was rather dark, the glass-like compound that it was made of was a pitch black colour. It was only discernible by the various lights around the dome flashing to indicate to passing craft that it was there. The pad itself was rather simple, an octagon with a large symbol painted on the centre, presumably a letter in their language to indicate a landing site. It was connected to the dome through a long strip of thick grey metal with gears visible on the sides, at the end of the strip was a massive hangar door with two industrial orange lights in the top corners. The pad lurched back slightly before it slowly started to retract and the massive doors started to open, revealing a large grey room adorned with various machines and such. The pad slowly slid into the room with the doors closing behind it and stopped in the centre before two large nozzles extended downwards from the roof, a moment later they blasted the shuttle with some form of highly pressurized vapour for a few seconds before stopping and retracting back into the roof. A similar door was in front of the vessel and it also opened, revealing a large industrial area. Several large buildings were immediately visible, most of them looking like warehouses and hangars with a large transport ship visibly being repaired in one of them. A large variety of yellow-painted logistical vehicles were bustling about delivering various supplies and pieces of equipment around, similarly painted Reborn with orange reflective vests were standing around writing things or lifting thing onto said logistical vehicles. In the distance, although heavily obscured by the industrial buildings, was the city itself. Long, thin rails with what appeared to be long train-like vehicles rocketing around attached to said rails. A few sky scrapers could be seen illuminated by lights of various colours and quite a few aerial craft could be seen buzzing around throughout the buildings. The dome itself was barely visible, only the faint shimmer of the material visible to the particularly observant. Instead it mostly looked like a normal night sky, but there weren’t any clouds. —————————— Trinity watched the hangar doors open and stared at the shuttle, muttering as she pointed to it and motioned for the SUV to pull up to it. Which it did. The SUV itself was very… intriguing. It had two front wheels but four rear ones and 3 doors on each side. They were black doors with completely tinted windows and unlike more primitive designs it completely lacked a visible grille on the front. instead a long light bar emitting a decently bright glow went across the front. The tires were quite smooth and the hub caps were solid disks of a matte black material. It drove right up to the shuttle with a roar before stopping in front of it, a white emblem visible on the hood of the vehicle with three letters below it. The engine sputtered off and the door on the left side opened and presumably the driver stepped out. They were completely covered in matte black armour with a pistol attached to their thigh, their chassis unlike any of the other Reborn there. If they had any knowledge of Reborn castes then it’d be immediately obvious that this was a member of a Corporate Tactical Force of some type, well equipped contractors hired by the EPA for sensitive situations that required specialized hands, it seemed that this was one of those times. They stepped around and opened the two other doors and then went back to stand by the Driver’s door again and rested their hands behind their back, waiting for someone to disembark. (edited)
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
03/13/2023 9:42 AM
Just a few seconds after the arrived, the ship started to move again, putting its legs in a different position and lowering its front end almos tall the way to the floor before folding part of it up to expose some sort of door, along with some of the extremely confusing insides of the ship. The door opened, slowly and with a lot of fog... not for some technical reason but literally just for dramatic effect. And then... Thonk. Thonk. Thonk. Slow, rythmical steps of something... rather large and heavy, breaching through the wall of fog and darkness. ------------------------ Easily as large as the Van that had brought that team here, covered in heavy ceramic pads and odd triangular metal panels with a blue glow behind them, that seemed weirdly out of place for the tech they'd seen so far. A beetle-like main body, an extended and thickened body segment where the head should be, ending in a rather anticlimactic perfect sphere for an actual head, decorated with just three holographic lines of blue light. Six heavy legs emerging from under the main body, several unidetifiable manipulator arms folded away under the "neck" segments. The main body split into sevral sectors, each looking like it could somehow retract or fold away or shift aside, no way to tell what was behind them. Its movements methodical, directed and purposed. Valence. And sitting on his neck segment, excitedly waving to the greeting team, was the complete opposite: Iuno. Tall, thin, the parts of his body somehow just floating in place without any visible attachments to hold them there, very fast almost erratic movements, four arms but other wise a normal humanoid shape, his head the characteristic yellow orb with four lines indicating eyes, the headphone-shaped bar of... whatever it was that projecting his head folded down. Walking besides them, one on each side of Valence's neck, were two other Capulin, one was seemingly a pretty normal humanoid. Two arms, two legs, kinda weird head and hand shape but decently normal. The other was a bell and/or upside-down flower, with a robot head on it not too dissimilar from theirs. Just... more round. And following behind, three on each side, were six identical, smaller mecha-beetles.
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
03/13/2023 10:19 AM
The armoured Reborn stared at the disembarked individuals and shook his head with a sigh. He gave a quick wave to them before saying: “If it isn’t fitting in the car then it’s not coming along, simple as.” Without giving them time to respond he then turned and hopped in, closing the door and the SUV sputtered a bit before roaring to life as the lights flicked on. The two doors facing them staying open seemingly as an invitation to enter. Meanwhile the driver played around with the console before reaching over to the passengers side and opening the glove box. Moving some type of compact gun out of the way and grabbing his pda, closing up the glovebox putting it down into a compartment next to the console and plugging it in. Suddenly the audio system buzzed to life and started quietly playing some sort of rural country tune, to which he started bobbing his head too while he waited for the individuals to do whatever it was that they were doing. Meanwhile Trinity just stared at the ship in exasperated confusion. How in the actual fuck was she going to go about refuelling that thing. Did they even want it refuelled? What the fuck was even the procedure for an alien shuttle landing! It was in the handbook somewhere but no one actually read that shit! She let out a frustrated sigh before turning towards a few dock workers who were stood perfectly still as if hoping to go unnoticed. She pointed at them and barked out a “you three go talk to them and figure this shit out!” She then scratched her robotic head before shaking it and returning back to her console, tapping away whilst praying that they’d actually be able to figure out so that way she didn’t have too.
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
03/13/2023 11:06 AM
Valence replied with some brief, rather menacing low droning sound, but that was seemingly not directed at them, but at his guards. Iuno hopped off, and him and the two other Capulin headed towards the Van, while one of the guards sprinted up to Valence's head. The touched heads, there was a brief chittering sound of communication between the two... then the massive frames lights suddenly changed colour, away from the monotone blue lighting to a mix of blues and yellows that the guard had had before, while the guard's lights turned solid blue. The three blue striped demanifesting from the bigger frame's head and appearing on the smaller one, as it too turned to follow into the van. The frame that used to house valence slowly walking back into the shuttle. --------------------------------- A brief conversation played out as they entered the Van: "How inconsiderate, to force my dearie into a different body... may as well just have let us follow them, no way you couldn't keep pace with their vehicles. What if we'd all been too large?" 'Their city. Their procedure. No arguing.' "Fine, fine..." ... "You know, it's weird for someone intended to rule a faction to not have been given... like, any dedicated systems for diplomacy, isn't it?" 'The precursors were bad at foresight. That's why they made you.' "Yeah, I guess you're- Hey!" low chuckle from Valence first, then also from Iuno. the two others just looked at eachother and lightly shook their heads --------------------------------- The few guards waiting outside the shuttle would be looking over to the dock workers who got yelled at, it wasn't exactly easy to read the face of a mechanical beetle with a solid ceramic hemisphere for a face, but, judging by the weird lines and symbols they were waiting for them to approach.
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
03/13/2023 12:23 PM
The Driver adjusted a knob on the console and the song changed to a more upbeat song with a catchy tune. He started bobbing his head and adjusted his rear-view mirror (which is something he should have done earlier). A small ornament hung from it of a Reborn holding up a book with a strange symbol on it and the words below the image in bright white reading out “Retainment is our way!” When the two entered the car he pushed a button and the doors closed themselves. He looked up at his mirror and stared at them for a second before placing a hand on the gear shift and putting the car into gear, they started driving away and he said: “So, enjoying your welcome to Vanguard so far? Don’t worry, the rest of the city isn’t as dry as the docks. And the hotel the Council booked for you two is top notch, I’ll check you in and show you two too your rooms and then you’ll get the night to yourselves. Then in the morning I’ll be back to give you a sort of guided tour of the city, which will actually just be telling you which places are cool and then you telling me where you want to go. Think of me as your temporary bodyguard, I’ll make sure you’re both safe and comfortable at all times whilst also ensuring that your privacy and dignity are respected. I can be as close or as far as you want me to be but I do have a job to do and I will not disregard it, clear?” He stopped at an intersection and turned left, the industrial scenery slowly starting to turn into a more urban environment. A few pedestrians were walking around and the buildings were becoming more decorated and cleaner but windows suddenly tinted themselves fully to the point they were completely opaque. He continued: “Now, because you’re foreign diplomats who also have minimal knowledge of us, you’ve been granted extensive diplomatic immunity. But it isn’t blanket coverage, if you do something bad enough you will get dinged for it. So no killing anyone, no stealing, none of that. And if someone tells you not to do something then don’t do it. But don’t worry about it too much because I’ll be within intervention distance during your stay, so i’ll catch you before you fuck things up too bad. Another thing you should note is that we’ve installed a new phone system into your rooms so that you’re able to communicate with the dock your shuttle is at in real time should that need arise.” He stopped and pressed a button and their windows rolled down, he chuckled and motioned for them to look outside before he turned right, the sight that they were met with would certainly explain his actions. They were immediately hit with the sound of some rather loud music playing outside, with Reborn of many different castes and colours playing instruments and holding up various things at commerce stands. Massive skyscrapers were visible all around them with screens attached advertising various products and services, some were showing news panels that upon closer examination were showing an aerial view of the very car they were in. Various other cars were buzzing past and alongside them with some of them rolling down their windows and snapping pictures of the car the two were in. Above them aerial vehicles buzzed up and around at a variety of speeds, one or two even hovered in sync with the car. The car took a turn and immediately the sidewalks were filled with various reports who immediately pointed their various devices towards the car and started recording and snapping pictures. On the centre of the block was a talk building with a black marble style structure lined with a blueish crystalline material, stairs covered in a red carpet descended from the front door down to the street which was guarded by several Reborn in an identical cast to their driver holding compact rifles. The driver pulled up to the building and stopped, reaching to the glovebox and pulling out the compact weapon he had stored in there earlier and motioned for them to get out.
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
03/13/2023 2:13 PM
They all seemed rather impressed and intrigued at what they were getting to see of the alien city, Iuno practically glue to the window. Several times he tries to wave at people outside, only for valence to remind him that those are tinted and the people can't see him. At least four separate times, in short succession. All looking especially impressed by the building they ended up pulling up to. ------------------------------- At the part about "respecting privacy and dignity" Iuno was very obviously about to start speaking, but then nothing was actually said as 3 loops of blue light manifested around his head, and he just looked at Valence, mildly annoyed. ... "Well you people sure have made a lot of precautions... Good, though, We might not have to make use of a lot of them. We don't need much space, aaand... the connection to the shuttle is handled by the shuttle and the big ship in orbit. Me and Valence don't actually compute in these little shells, we're running remotely from on the main ship. That also means... if anyone would decide to attack us for whatever reason, get the two others safe first. Me and her have lots of replacement shells, they don't." ... "Also, would it be bad for our own guards to openly show they've got weapons?" "...And whatever is that building made of...?" --- Assuming these get an answer before they leave the vehicle --- The little beetle now housing Valence would be the first to step out, then Iuno, then the other two side-by-side behind them. Valence looking like he gave not a singular fuck as usual, Iuno and the humanoid one with their arms politely behind their backs and looking around (Though Iuno mostly looking up at the building and not really where he was going), the bell also looking around but... that one didn't seem to have any arms. (edited)
March 14, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
03/14/2023 7:52 AM
Their driver now turned bodyguard motioned for them to hurry along towards the hotel while looking around and watching the assembled crowd of onlookers and press warily. The second he was clear of the vehicle one of the armoured Reborn that were already there wordlessly walked up and got into it before pulling away from the hotel and speeding off. Their bodyguard then turned to them and said: “No need, we’ll make sure you all get to where you’re going in one piece. We get paid well for a reason.” As they approached the carpet it’d become blatantly obvious that not only were the Reborn their to make sure no one tried anything funny but also to disperse the massive crowd that’d gathered. Barricades were set up around the entrance and several of them were aiming their weapons into the crowd shouting warnings to stay back. As they’d begin entering the hotel red flashing lights suddenly could be visible accompanied by the roar of some sort of aerial vehicle, only that this one was painted completely black with the same emblem the car had on it’s side. Oh and it had a massive autocannon on the front that was aimed at the left side of the crowd, that was a pretty big difference as well. It also started blaring warnings to disperse via a loudspeaker somewhere on the exterior of the vessel. The inside of the hotel was rather nice. Their guard collapsed the weapon he’d retrieved from the glovebox and attached it to his back before heading to the reception desk, motioning for them to follow. The receptionist was quite extravagantly adorned, seemingly covered in silver lined with gold and spoke with a rich voice when they approached: “Welcome to Cloud haven, you room numbers have been sent to your pda and once you’re settled a serviceperson will be sent to each room to accommodate and provide for anything you wish. We hope you enjoy your stay here in Paradise.” The guard nodded respectfully and turned towards the others, letting out a sigh before resting his hands on his hips and saying: “Well, we’re finally here. I’m not going to lie that went as smooth as I think it could have gone. Now it’s time for introductions, you can call me Epsilon. Welcome to Vanguard Station, now do you want to go straight to your rooms or do you want to hang out in the lobby?” He pointed to his right where a massive TV was attached to the wall and various other amenities were scattered around, seemingly some sort of welcoming buffet. If they tried to look back towards the entrance outside they’d notice that the entrance was now similarly tinted except that they could not see outside. Interesting.
Cpt_Waterbubble
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03/14/2023 8:18 AM
-still outside- "Good. I sure hope so."... ... ..."This does take me back to the days of when I was first put into power, the crowds, the escorts, the excessive amount of firepower threats for crowd retention... Just without the suicide bombers. So good job on having your crowds under control." ---------------------------- Having more clearly identified the type of crowd this was, ALl four of them were no longer looking into the crowd, either looking ahead or, like Iuno, just kinda staring at the building... And promptly almost walking into the door, excep Valence grabs him by the foot last moment to pull him closer. Surprisingly he only almost falls over, but keeps walking. Valence would quickly and quietly follow that up with a 'Would you mind trying to look at least somewhat less incompetent than this at first contact?' Inside the building they just resumed their looking around. ---------------------------- "Well... good to have a name for reference and, I see no reason for us to go to a room now... we barely just got going... so... Assuming we have to wait, might as well do that in the Lobby. Also... I heard that other unit mention something about a PDA... just a guess, but, would your people also happen to have a univeral information sharing device as we do?" The two other Capulin both show a little device, about the size of a pen. Iuno also suddenly sounded a lot more... mentally present. Out of all the things, that one little detail had instantly caught his full attention.
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
03/14/2023 8:50 AM
They nodded along with what they said before flinching when they said “unit” and the receptionist gasped. They turned and held up a hand before making a sound similar to clearing their throat and said: “Just letting you know, the U word is a no no word. Hah. Anyway yeah we do have a ‘universal info gadget’ or whatever. Called a PDA, personal data apparatus but some call it assistant and some call it an expensive piece of shit, few names for it really. The pricier models have ANCNET access but most don’t. That’s more of a personal computer thing, y’know.” He nodded before pointing to a remote near the previously mentioned TV and said: “I’m assuming you know how to work that? Pretty simple, to be honest.” He nodded without actually waiting for the answer and turned back to the receptionist and said something indiscernible to them before immediately snaking his way over to what looks like a giant vending machine, poking a few buttons on it until it dispensed an unmarked simply grey can with a tab on the top. Pulling it back with a pop as the smell of oil and gasoline immediately flooded the room, a previously unnoticeable cap popped open just beneath his “face” and he then proceeded to pour the entirety of the contents into it before smashing the can against his head and tossing the crumpled can into a nearby bin. He turned back towards them before saying: “Oh yeah, unless you want to drink essentially really diluted rocket fuel I would pretty much avoid any liquid available for purchase unless it is explicitly given to you by myself, the staff here or someone who looks like me. And definitely don’t drink any red fluid that’s given to you no matter the circumstances, because that’s hydrazine and drinking it will fuck you up to a significant degree.” He nodded before tapping his fingers against his armoured thigh, seemingly debating on what to do before he slowly looked over at the TV and shrugged. Hopping over the back of a couch and plopping down on it before reaching out and grabbing the remote, then pausing and whipping his head around excitedly to them and saying: “Shit I almost forgot the first episode of the new season of Arkadia’s Revenge came out today. You all gotta come watch this shit!” He then quickly looked back at the tv and pressed various buttons before the screen switched to a title card, a symbol of a city with letters arranged below in their native language as heroic epic style music played in the background. The music ended and the title card then switched to a scene where a much more primitive looking Reborn with much older military equipment was huddled in a trench with various other similar looking Reborn. It seemed interesting.
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
03/14/2023 9:35 AM
Iuno briefly mumbled something about the translators being very hastily made after being told about the word, his head hologram briefly flickering into a wall of foreing letters and shifting code, with him letting out a somewhat angry noise for which they didn't even need a translator to know that it was a swear in his native language. --- He stayed quiet for just a second after Epsilon was done, also sitting down, then... "You've... just made one hell of an assumption there. We're not made from your tech, always keep that in mind. We don't..." He stops, turns to face the humanoid Capulin "What model bioreactor did you have?" C1:'15-V.' "Maybe... not tested, but the 16s can..." Turns to the bell one C2:'8-MD' "Not that one, alright," turns back to face the guy "Okay, aside from one of us maybe, we don't run on the same fuels you do. I've got induction charging and swapable power cells, they" pointing at the humanoid and bell "have Bioreactors meant for more... organic substances, and he" pointing at Valence "Has fusion cells absorbers, so, basically just runs on hydrogen. We can all share power, so, just a supply of hydrogen will propably do, but... yeah we can't really make good use of liquid fuels like those." ... "Also... you say that like we can purchase anything here. I... wasn't provided any of whatever currency you people use." Iuno and Valence were lookig at Epsilon during this, the other two would quickly just turn tto also watch the TV.
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
03/14/2023 10:02 AM
Epsilon continued to watch TV, the scene shifting to the cast charging a building whilst a blinding flash appeared in the background and an all too familiar style of mushroom cloud started to rise from it, the charging cast then immediately started taking heavy fire from a bombed out and lopsided skyscraper and several of them hit the ground brutally. He threw up his hands in exasperation when that happened and shouted something about how inaccurate the depiction was before he realized they were talking to them and turned to them: “Oh, uh. Right, we’re still integrating with the rest of the galaxy but if you have Sig most well established places will take that. If not uhm, fuck it take this.” He pulled out a thin plastic card and tossed it to Iuno, it was pitch black with a thin golden line going down the middle with more foreign lettering on it. He then turned back to the TV and watched as a tank slowly rolled up and blasted a hole into the building the enemy was in, pumping his fist and muttering something about how now it was becoming accurate. However suddenly the TV froze much to the dismay of Epsilon, but his outburst was quickly silenced when the screen changed to a strange symbol much like the emblems on the armoured vehicles they had seen but without the lettering. A familiar deep robotic voice spoke from the TV with a noticeably irritated tone: “Guardsman, you are SUPPOSED to be escorting them to their rooms and making sure their needs are met, not watching fucking TV while they ask questions about our society. Get. Off. Your. Ass. And do your fucking job, when I show up in the morning I had better be impressed with your devotion to your duty. Is that clear?” Epsilon, who had quickly stood up, was now kneeling and he quietly said: “Of course, councillor.” The deep voice’s tone lightened up significantly after that and they turned their attention to the others, not that you could notice that until they spoke: “I apologize for the laziness of your guard, please, enjoy your stay here at Vanguard and relax while your ship is repaired. Anything you need will be provided of course, have a good night.” The TV then returned back to the show but at a much quieter volume, the receptionist looked shaken and Epsilon stood up and motioned towards the hallway and said: “If you would please follow me.”
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
03/14/2023 10:35 AM
Iuno didn't exactly pay attention to the TV, but uddenly did when the image changed... he seemed somewhere between surprised and amused at the sudden appearance, slowly tilting into something betwen mild annoyance, concern and confusion... To the voice in the TV "Uhh, hold on, repaired? The... shuttle wasn't damaged, and... I wasn't sure if that earlier was a translation error or you misheard me , I said rescue vessel, not repair. We've not called that in yet... they're pretty expensive to run, so if anything is being repaired... it shouldn't be. And, please be less harsh on this guy, I chose not to go to my room yet. He's doing just fine." ... He sighs, then gets up to follow Epsilon "But, very well, I guess I'm going there now." The other two had been watching the TV, the humanoid one just watching the bell having deployed a rather thin robotic arm from underneath the bell and taking notes on their... Pen? Turns out those had holographic screens in them, making the whole device about the size of a large mobile phone or small tablet when the screen was on. They both seemed surprised at the sudden appearance, the humanoid one shifting to a more formal posture, the bell still taking notes. And Valence just observing with the same unchanging expression and posture, he just stood there like a damn statue until he was asked to follow.
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
03/14/2023 11:15 AM
Epsilon caught a card that was tossed from the receptionist and continued into the hallway, passing by identical doors with strange symbols, presumably numbers, on them. Coming to a stop to two doors on opposite sides of the hallway. He swiped his card over the handle of the one on the left and the door slowly swung open, revealing an absolutely excessive room. The floor was a rich purple carpet and the walls were a dark black marble, a massive bed was in the centre with a black blanket inlaid with golden decorations. Two very fluffy pillows were at the end with an identical style, there was a massive TV at the opposite side of the room from the bed and large speakers below it. On the far side of the room there were tinted one-way windows that showed the bustling city outside, aerial vehicles buzzing about and fireworks occasionally crackling in the distance. There were two other doors on the opposite corner with two more symbols inscribed on them. Epsilon went over to both of them and tapped them in order of left to right and said: “This is called a shower, designed for organic species who require liquid water for… whatever they do in these things. On this side is a gas shower more suited towards synthetic individuals, this thing will decon you in a minute if that. In each room you’ll see a small red button, push it and you’ll have five men in here in full body armour with assault rifles burst into the room. I believe some call it a ‘panic button’. At the door near the light switch is a green button, that calls room service for whatever you may need or want. The big comfy looking thing is a bed, it’s a bit old because most Reborn don’t use them but this room was specifically designed for extrasolar visitors. If at anytime you’d want my presence for some reason just call out but if there is an emergency I highly recommend pressing the button instead.” He nodded before tapping his fingers against the door frame, seemingly thinking what to do before he gave them a wave and left. Entering the room on the right and closing the door, which locked with an audible click a moment later.
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
03/14/2023 12:06 PM
"Huh, well... that's a style of accomodation I've not seen since... like, my very early days. We don't build much like that anymore either... Oh well, it'll do. Just need to find some way to get a reliable hydrogen supply out of a shower..." With that last comment having been said rather offhandedly, he stepped into the room, the others following behind, and he closed the door. -------------------------------
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
03/14/2023 12:25 PM
What followed shortlywithin the room, most other races would place somewhere between disturbing, disgusting and absolutely horrifying... but for the Capulin, it was as normal as could be. They were modular, and they needed a device that could be made from parts they had. So, taking parts from all three others, Electrolyzer and power processing parts out of the bell, Tubing and excess casings out of the humanoid, a Fusion cell compressor from the shell Valence inhabited, Iuno took those parts from them... And put them together. The damage barely visible beyond melt-sealed tears in the rubber between their plates and a few new open access ports, the new device covered in rubber and ceramic shells with the help of the countless tools under the bells petals... He had reassembled currently unneeded fragments of their internal organs into a compact, portable, self-powering high-flow electrolyzer with the necessary parts to refuel fusion cartridges. And swiftly mounted it to the shower to let it start working.
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
03/14/2023 1:05 PM
The Next Morning.
Epsilon knocked on their door three times before swiping his card and opening it up, walking inside and over to the window. He stared out at the expanse in front of him before he said: “Hope you’re ready for an exciting and educational day of adventure and fun. Jokes aside, the car’s out front so when you’re ready we’ll head on down and I’ll drive you around and show you some sights then if you want to stop at one or go somewhere completely different you let me know and I’ll bring you there.” The morning “sky” in the dome was the endless expanse of space, with the city illuminated as if it was a terrestrial day by the system’s star. The windows were slightly tinted but not near as much as they were last night, varied forms of traffic buzzing around the city and in the vast distance beyond the dome several naval ships could be seen slowly burning across space. Certainly not a bad view, but judging by how fancy this place was it was to be expected that the view would be good. He reached out and tapped the window before pulling out his pda and started watching something on it. A quiet voice said: “Efforts on Ixlo are currently underway, although personnel currently on station have yet to comment as you can see two Federal drop ships were deployed from the FNSV Salvation a newly renovated Havalen Class. We switch now to the Corporate Command Centre in the Ravine system where trace amounts of tritium have just been uncovered, estimates say this will allow for another Arkadia Class to enter construction.” He snorted and muttered something about tax money being burned and switched to another channel while he waited on the others in the room.
Cpt_Waterbubble
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03/14/2023 3:42 PM
"Very well... I don't quite see the purpose in sightseeing when pictures would do, but, I guess it's a nice chance of pace from my usual work..." Taking a glance out of the window "Also may I say, at least from how few of you I've seen... it's impressive that you people put so much in terms of time, effort and resources into building cities like this to ward off space and fit your bodies, instead of just... adapting your bodies to fit space. That's what I did, at least. Might just be my approach though, the engineering is still impressive." And pauses to listen to the (presumed) news report... ..."Tritium? Really, that's rare to you? Man, am I ever gonna have lots of nearly-free goodies to offer your people... Well then, let's go." Waving over for the others to get up. They'd been idly sitting on the bed, Valence in utter bored silence, the other two conversing in their native language (Which sounded like some mix of bitcrushed choir and slightly more musical dialup modem), but would all swiftly get up and follow.
Sheng [SD | VA]
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03/14/2023 6:46 PM
Epsilon shrugged and put his pda away, the council had decided that domes were way more cost effective then included life support systems so who was he to say otherwise. Even the recent bill to introduce more vacuum capable castes as standard had been completely shot down by the council, something many found odd but lacked the motivation to truly push the issue. He said: “And yes it is rare, quite a shock when we learned many have it in abundance. But we have also become the producers of some of the most potent chemical fuels that the galaxy has seen as a result.” He opened the door to their room again and flinched before quickly moving to the side. In the doorway stood a slightly shorter Reborn with a slightly more feminine figure who seemed… plated in sheets of diamond with cracks inlaid with gold. Interesting. Two heavily armed and armoured guards stood behind them, holding belt fed machine guns with the belts holding what looked like rather large rounds. Epsilon bowed slightly and the individual entered the room with the two guards remaining outside. They looked at the room and nodded in approval before strolling up towards the two AI, staring at them intently and lifting up one of Iuno’s arms and walking around them. They then stopped in front of them and spoke in a deeply rich and slightly feminine voice: “The ol’ brute has sent me in his place, we’ve already talked before but I figured an introduction in-person wouldn’t be such a horrible idea. I am Archon five, you can simply call me five though. And my oh my I must say this design is rather adorable, created for you or did you design it yourself?” They shook their head before turning towards the window and approaching it, looking out towards the city and saying: “Actually don’t tell me, it adds a nice little air of mystery to you. Anyway I’ll be accompanying you all for this exploratory endeavour and we can chit chat while doing so, isn’t that just wonderful?~” They turned back towards them and leaned back against the window, crossing their legs and arms as they waited to see what they said in response.
March 15, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
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03/15/2023 11:00 AM
Despite it not being visible much in his expression, he did get a bit flustered at the compliment... As soon as she stops talking, Iuno looks over at Valence, triumphantly "Hah, I told you they wouldn't be as dry-cold as you are!" Disgruntled silence from Valence "Well anyways... Yes!" Looking back at her, intently studying her ... "Wait, is that... frame of yours here is that... you? Like is your processing going on in that frame, or, is it more like me with a remote-controlled puppet and a big server somewhere else?" Once again, he suddenly seemed a lot more present, and somewhat more exicted. Head ever-so-slightly tilted, speaking noticeably faster, and expressively moving his hands around a lot. And having four of them, that meant lots of gestures. (edited)
Sheng [SD | VA]
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03/15/2023 11:21 AM
Five snickered at the questions whilst she slowly tapped her metal digits against her right arm, quiet little clacks being audible from the contacts. She then uncrossed her arms and legs and looked out towards the window for a second and said: “Think of this as a vehicle for me. It’s currently being remotely piloted by me from the Citadel but is highly specialized and configured to my own liking and specifications, and being able to.. What’s the word, ‘transfer’ into a new body is a privilege only the council has access too. As we were designed to be able to move freely throughout the digital world, ordinary Reborn were not. They were organic minds injected into a synthetic body, we were synthetic by birth. If a Reborn tried to transfer, while possible, it would be an extremely dangerous procedure. So we outlawed transfers in the first century. The Citadel also has the strongest technology in the whole of the Second Dawn so no need to worry about latency or similar issues.” She tapped against the window, pointing to a particularly bright white dot far off in the expanse of space beyond the dome and continued: “That, is New Archon. Our capital world and where the Citadel currently resides, however I must disappoint you by saying a majority of the council is rather cold and dry. Brute, aka ‘Archon-1’ is a perfect example of such a… boring attitude. He was the first of us created, way back before the final transfer during the end of the restorationist wars. So he can be a bit rough around the edges, he kind of lives by the old proverb ‘control that which you cannot destroy.’ It’s the rest of us that keep him reigned in.” She let out a bored sigh before turning around and pointing towards the door and said: “Sorry but if you want History you should have talked to Herald, I’M here to show you our totally awesome city that I personally invested billions into to make sure it was cool and fun and pretty! So can we go on the tour now?” Her voice had an underlying tone of excitement. Evidently she really wanted to show them around, Epsilon just facepalming and muttering something about scaring off foreign investors. (edited)
Cpt_Waterbubble
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03/15/2023 11:36 AM
The look in his eyes was like an excited child "Yes!" Turning on his nenexistant heel to face the door, and making some heroic pointing gesture to the door with one of his lower arms ..."We-... Wrong arm!" Making the same gesture with the upper arm on that side "We go!" ..."Also, very good to know you do work like us, but propably with less copying. Excellent choice. Where are we going?" The humanoid, who had sortof been standing near Epsilon, quietly spoke... C1:'Iuno's far too much of a social idiot to be deterred by any amount of conversation, and V has to deal with him every moment of his existence and has like, just stopped caring about that type of behaviour. It's impossible to scare them off like that.' Before turning to walk over to Iuno, just like the other two.
March 16, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
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03/16/2023 5:55 PM
She clapped her hands together and said “Excellent! Let’s get going then!” And proceeded towards the door, opening it and whispering something to the two guards outside who nodded in response. Epsilon just shook his head and sighed before stepping out into the hallway himself to follow her. Without waiting for the other two to follow the four of them made their way to the main lobby, the same receptionist was there once again and Epsilon tossed the card back too them. He approached the main entrance and peered outside, the crowd had all but grown. Likely due to the appearance of a councillor, but so had the security. Now genuine barricades were set up with properly equipped guards standing behind them, but the crowd was much calmer from the night before. Three of the SUVs waited at the end of the carpet instead of just one this time. The two guards split off and entered the one in the middle whilst Epsilon and Five entered the first one, the back doors opening automatically once again for the foreign delegation. Once Five and Epsilon were situated Five turned to Epsilon and said “Where do you think is a good place to start? I was thinking we could start with the government centre but they might find that a bit dry, perhaps the city’s centre instead? Because that’s got everything, the war museum, cinemas and it’s tourist friendly so we don’t need to worry too much about security.” Epsilon thought about it for a moment, pulling out his pda and looking at a map of the city. He stared at it for a few seconds before saying back to her “Yeah definitely save the government centre for last, but starting with the city’s centre might not be a bad idea… Yeah, I think that’s what we’ll do.” Epsilon nodded to himself and the SUV roared to life, he looked back towards the other vehicles of the convoy while he waited for the foreign delegation. Then realizing he had yet to put on music so he reached down and pressed a button and a calm electric style tune started to hum in the background.
March 17, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
03/17/2023 3:47 PM
Iuno seemed somewhat confused about hs last question having been entirely ignored. All four of them simply silently following behind until they got to the car... They were directly behind he two, so, did hear everything. "Well... I'll trust your judgement on destiantion. We may be by no means tourists, but, avoiding... unsightly areas in favor of favorable diplomatic opinion is a respectable effort, and one I apreciate as a sign of good intentions." Said with not even a hint of any kind of sarcasm.. he really did just say that he saw trying to trick him as a good thing. ... "Though by all respect... anything that I can see all the same by being shown a picture or text or similar of it, we can avoid. That is to say... no museums unless they're really something special. Those are usually dreadfully boring, and I might as well just parse historical documents and learn more, faster, better." (edited)
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
03/17/2023 7:29 PM
Epsilon looked back at Iuno and nodded, turning to Five who snickered and looked back at him. He snorted and muttered something about skipping the museum before putting the car into gear and peeling off, the two cars behind them following at a respectable distance. They turned right at the end of the block with the Hotel and started heading towards the centre of the city. The further they went the more active it became, in both good and bad ways. There were more people but the general feel also became less joyful, the buildings grew larger and fancier and the people walking around looked cleaner and more formal. There was also an increase in “police” presence, if you could call it that. Armoured black personnel carriers went from being a scarce sight to being seen every second block, an unexpectedly sudden increase to be sure. Epsilon glanced at them on occasion and gave them a slight nod. Five meanwhile was abnormally silent for the entire ride, explicitly avoiding looking out at the people of the city. Epsilon noticed this and started to increase his speed slightly. They even passed a team of Reborn clad in thick, black armour seemingly arresting a duo of Reborn. Their rifles pressed against the back of their heads and some of the metal on the detainees face appeared even slightly dented. It was then when Five finally spoke in a quiet tone “Unity comes at a cost.” And then went silent again. They passed a large grey skyscraper with a poster hanging near the entrance of one of those black armoured Reborn holding another at gunpoint, the one at gunpoint was holding a smaller Reborn hostage with a knife to the side of their head. Text above the image read out “REPORT DISSIDENTS TO LOCAL E.P.A HEADQUARTERS. SYMPATHIZERS WILL BE PENALIZED.” Epsilon looked at it for a second before turning to Five, staring at her with a slight hesitance to his stance before he returned his eye to the road. Finally, a large circle became visible in front of them and they turned right to enter what seemed like a massive roundabout. Reborn of all kinds were walking around stopping into various buildings, many of them seemingly joyful and excited about whatever it was they were doing and the atmosphere itself had partially returned to the joyful nature it was earlier. That is if you ignored the scattered pairs of soldiers patrolling around holding machine guns. It seemed that Vanguard Station was not the perfect paradise it originally appeared to be.
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
03/17/2023 8:16 PM
It took a short while for Iuno to start speaking again, thought, it looked more like he'd been lost in thought most of the way until now... but still carefully tracking everything going on outside "It... really does seem you people aren't too different from my creators. You don't need to be concerned about me seeing this - I was pretty much expecting it. Cultural differences in a system allowing for high freedom of thought and action inevitably leads to conflict. Exactly the conflict I was purposed to resolve, actually. Especially in species under as much societal flux as convertee-artificial ones like us, it leads to heavy resistance agains tthe system, it did for us too... and, while I may have defeated it, as you so perfectly put it... unity comes at a cost." ...He spoke with... not quite regret, but a sortof... weariness. He was understanding, but cautious. And in a more serious tone than previously, they had really hit into his main area of expertise with this. ... "I wonder if you'll also take the same steps I needed reach the near-total unity my kind achieved after I was instated. At least you guys have a head start on being accepted as mostly artificial. And having the right goals. Though... I'd advise agains taking any of my advice on any of this." followed by a mild chuckle ...and then Valence unexpectedly cut in 'As much as I do not wish to interfere with a field outside my purpose, I must disagree. Despite how much a fool he may make of him self, he still posesses immense capabilities in this field and should be considered as an advisor should one be needed.' Iuno now looking down at Valence with a mix of immense confusion and disbelief
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
03/17/2023 10:52 PM
The two Reborn sat in silence after what the two other AI said, with Epsilon looking back and nodding in acknowledgment before opening the doors to the car and getting out. Epsilon looked back at the other cars but no one was disembarking from them, so Epsilon just turned to look at Five who looked behind her then back at Epsilon and shrugged as if to say “what?” Epsilon shook his head before looking at the two AI’s and then the doors to the SUV opened automatically for them. When they eventually disembarked he’d place his hands on his hips and then say “Alright there’s a decent bit of choices for the two of you. Could take a visit to the cinema and see what’s playing, which I think might be the funnest option if that’s what you’re going for. But we can also take a visit to the local E.P.A headquarters and you could get a tour there, won’t be as fun as the Cinema but it will be culturally informative and definitely not as dry as the museum.” Five snickered at that before waltzing over and flicking him on the side of the head before saying herself “You know they probably have no idea what the EPA is right? Goofball?” She snorted before facing towards the two of them and saying “The EPA is the Executive Protection Agency, they are our police and military force. They answer directly to the Citadel, aka me and my six chucklefuck friends, and their whole job is to make sure that the entirety of the Second Dawn feels and is safe and secure from both within and without. As you may have already gathered from your limited encounters with them they tend to be hot headed and the ‘interdict first ask questions later’ kinda people.” She turned to Epsilon and scratched the side of her metal head and said “Then again Progressor population jumped another point five percent in the past month which is fucking astonishing, so at this rate you might be able to say that about most Reborn.” Epsilon stared at her before muttering something about ranting on politics in front of foreign diplomats who know nothing about it. He made a mechanical throat clearing sound before saying “Ok time to have, THE TALK. As you may have noticed we’re kinda weird compared to some Reborn you might have already met and or seen. That is because we, me and Five, are Retainers. Think of it as a mix between an ethnic race and a political party. Five is the only Retainer Councillor on the council of seven so that’s why she seems so weird compared to the others you’ve talked too. Retainers are those who want to be emotional and party and all the assorted things where as Progressors want to suppress their emotions and essentially work all the time always and usually they’re very cold and act like they have sticks up their asses. Currently seventy- seventy one? Yeah seventy one percent of the current population which is over twelve billion reborn, are Progressors. The remaining minority are Retainers and that number dwindles every year. Just some context because you’re for sure going to hear the words Progressor and Retainer pop up a lot if we go anywhere with cultural significance.” Five nodded in agreement with what he said before they both looked at Iuno and Valence to see what they said.
March 18, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
03/18/2023 2:09 PM
All four of them were listening attentively the entire time, and Iuno almost immediately responded... "Hmm... Exactly the kind of ideological schism I was expetcting, just... not how I was expecting it. Interesting. Emotion was the one part of my people I never dared to touch. Maybe because of me being programmed to somewhat keep them what they are, who knows, but... Yeah, I can see how that leads to a massive split. And honestly, I'd agree more with you than the other people. Emotions, no matter how unpredictable and illogical they may be at times, are required for creativity and ingenuity. Pure logic leads to only optimization without innovation, you need random chance, mixups in there somewhere to force changes. I mean, look at my tech. You saw how weird it was. I was originally built... more like how my dearie ended up, dry, logical, perfect in reasoning. For like a week, then I got so bored I became willingly mad and... well, decided to intentionally forego perfect optimization in favor of uniqueness, and that got us where we are now. And I dare say, our tech works pretty damn well. However, pure logic sometimes in needed too, to keep things in check, to keep them somewhat making sense and on track and most importantly to prevent further schisms. To Veto the choices emotions can impulsively make should they go too far, and keep a clear view on everything that's going on, hence... well, her being my counterpart in everything we do and being able to do just that. Striking a balance is very important. Neither side should ever fully win, and if they do, stagnation or regression is nigh-inevitable until the other side re-emerges out of the breakdown." ... "And uh, incase you still need the answer, I'd like the police thing tour. As much as movies would be nice, I don't think I can sit and be still for that long at a time." mild chuckle (edited)
March 19, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
03/19/2023 5:42 PM
Epsilon and Five nodded in agreement to Iuno's point of view. Epsilon looked at Five before clapping his hands once and turned around and pointed towards a grey building off in the distance, saying "Well then, let us commence forth." Five let out an amused snort as Epsilon started walking off towards it. She facepalmed and snorted again whilst muttering about why she had ever approved of his construction before shaking her head and following. The walk to the local EPA headquarters was relatively boring, the pedestrians strolling around gave them a respectable amount of personal space but a few did break out their PDA and take a few pictures. Epsilon started quietly humming a tune before Five groaned and smacked him on the back of the head, eliciting a quiet apology before they continued in silence. Eventually they arrived at the building in question. It was very... bland. Thick black metal walls with a revolving door at the entrance, the same emblem that was on the aerial vehicle and the SUV's was engraved into the metal in gold. Epsilon sighed and went to enter the building before the revolving door promptly rotated the other way and not-so-politely bumped him backwards. A figure was visible through the rather blurry glass leaving the building, Epsilon visibly tensing up seemingly about to give the person a piece of his mind when he stopped still as the individual exited. And they were a fucking titan. They were atleast an entire foot taller then Epsilon and Five and they were completely clad in thick black all-body armour. The camera eye that all Reborn had was reinforced and guarded by a red lens with a visible grille inside of it and the central plate on their chest had a spear painted on it. Upon seeing this Five muttered something about overkill and Epsilon bowed slightly before the individual crossed their arms and looked down upon the delegation. The individual let out a robotic growl before saying in a cold and irritated tone "A Councilor, trifling around in the streets with a foreign delegation and only a single bodyguard? Have you gone mad, Five? What if they had been attacked? What if there had been dissidence?" He shook his head in frustration before landing his eye on Epsilon, snarling as he reached out and grabbed him by the throat and lifted him up off the ground causing Epsilon to grab at the thick armoured limbs but to no avail. The individual continued in an even colder tone "You. You were foolish enough to permit this, I do not care that they are your... 'Friend'. Your duty supersedes that, you fucking imbecile. What use do I have for defective personnel? Report to the fucking deck before I cleave your miserable head from your pathetically useless body." With that he suddenly dropped Epsilon who hit the street with a loud thud who quickly stood up and proceeded inside. Five was as still as a statue as he strode past them and extended a monstrous hand towards Iuno, introducing himself with a rough but slightly more pleasant tone "Greetings, I apologize for the immaturity of your escort and my fellow Councilor. You may refer to me as Archon One, Chief Overseer of the Second Dawn and the Executive Protection Agency. May I invite you inside for your tour?"
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
03/19/2023 6:04 PM
Iuno kept both pairs or arms firmly crossed behind his back. His eyes, previously perfectly parallel and vertical, slightly tilting outwards as he watched what was going on... His response had a previously unheard toxic snarl to it, a grating dissonance backed with static, and for the first time he raised his voice, properly. "Short bit of advice for diplomatic contact: do not assault your own populace when the f[sss]cking foreign delegation can see it. You may proceed, but if I see one more of you treating your people like this, openly violent, be it verbal or physical, and with an utter disregard to the situation at hand over blindly following protocol, without even ASKING if we have an issue with it, I am turning around and leaving on the spot. The only issue I had with him is that other people kept yelling at him for no good reason, our security is of no issue to me, all four of us are armed well enough to defend ourselves should it come down to that." very long sigh, all four of his hands raised to support his head (or rather, the headphone-thing projecting it, which had flipped forwards to let him hold it) "Go ahead now, I need some distractions..." making a dismissive waving gesture. The two capulin had backed several meters away and were visibly pretty scared, and even valence had taken a few sidesteps to distance himself. (edited)
March 20, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
03/20/2023 9:33 AM
Five just stared between the two of them, completely frozen with about as much of a horrified expression as Reborn could make. One just crossed his arms behind his back and stepped towards them, saying in a much more cheery and polite tone “Allow me to educate you. The Second Dawn is a nation of honour, order and dignity. Naturally our most esteemed agents must embody this spirit to the fullest extent, the agent sent to escort you has done a completely horrible job of doing so and will consequently be punished appropriately at a later date. As a member of the Council and the head of the Trilateral Board, it is my job to ensure that the apparatus of the state meets my expectations and conducts themselves accordingly. So I am not disciplining him for ‘No Reason’. Please take the time to learn of our ways and how we conduct ourselves before injecting yourself into situations you know nothing about, as from this interaction I have gathered that our cultures are vastly different. If you cannot handle that fact then I am more than happy to see to it that you are and your people are promptly removed from the city and returned to your ship for the remainder of your stay in our territory.” His camera eye narrowed slightly and the revolving door spun around and two similarly armoured individuals appeared before moving to stand at Archon One’s side, rifles in hand. Five looked between the two of them before bowing their head slightly and saying “My apologies, Councillor. My behaviour has been unacceptable in the presence of foreign diplomats. We shall discuss this further upon my return to the Citadel, I will ensure that my future conduct is satisfactory to the appropriate standards.” She moved to stand next to Iuno and crossed her own arms behind her back before facing them and saying “Shall we continue with the tour?”
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
03/20/2023 10:45 AM
Iuno stayed silent... not because he wanted to but, as the three blue rings around his head once again told them, Valence was not letting him speak. 'Proceed.' Followed by something in their native language directed at the other two, who proceeded to step directly up to Iuno, the humanoid grabbing the main body component while the bell pressed in something on the underside of that segment, and... suddenly Iuno just fucking folded, literally. The lower arms and both legs folding up to rest behind his back, the upper arms infront to let the humanoid one wear Iuno as a backpack. He looked vaguels displeased, but mostly fine with it. The humanoid started mumbling something to himself, interjected by Valence giving another order, causing both of the others to step right behind valence, giving the two archons some mix of a salute and a bow before standing ready to follow. (edited)
March 21, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
03/21/2023 10:05 AM
Five nodded and made to proceed towards the revolving door before One raised a hand to stop her, he lightly shook his head before saying “There is no need for two Councillors to accompany them on their tour. I will handle things from now on, meanwhile your presence has been requested at the Citadel. Best hurry along now, you don’t want to keep them waiting. Oh- and I will ensure that the delegation is well taken care of.” Five hesitantly nodded before turning around and heading back towards the cars, One nodded his approval before turning around and proceeding into the building, the two guards pointing at the delegation and motioning for them to follow. The interior of the building was rather nice, with clean black carpet floors and black marble walls illuminated by bright white lights above them. Once they entered One would look around before spotting another similarly, although lightly, armoured Reborn and motioned for him to come over. The Reborn approached and gave a quick salute before One introduced him to the Delegation, saying “Greetings Carbon, I’m glad you’ve returned safely. This is a foreign delegation who are currently enjoying the sights of Vanguard and have requested a tour of our local headquarters, would you be so kind as to show them around?” Carbon nodded before turning to the delegation and giving them a quick salute before crossing his arms behind his back and saying to them in a polite tone as One walked away “Greetings, As you may have heard I am called Carbon. Feel free to refer to me as that as well. If you’d follow me please.” He extended his arm to a hallway to the left which appeared to lead to some sort of office space.
March 23, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
03/23/2023 6:02 AM
There wasn't much the delegation could do besides following inside the building, politely and silently waiting out the conversation, then giving a slight bow and following Carbon.
March 27, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
03/27/2023 10:00 AM
Carbon lead them to the office space, it was rather well equipped and spacious with a plethora of desks arranged in an acceptable manner. Most desks had a Reborn sat down at them muttering into a microphone attached to a computer but some were up and around passing reports to others and staring at the large screen in the centre of the room. It was a 2d view of the city on the surface and the “air” space around it, with a variety of coloured blips above and around the city. A majority of them were green and labeled “CV” but some of them were red and labeled “FN” and others were white with three symbols above them that appeared to be something like a question mark. Carbon gestured to the room as a whole and said “This room goes by many names. Customs, border control, traffic control, dispatch, there is no real name for this room. What it is, is the primary centre where the Agency monitors all incoming, outgoing and passing traffic inside of Vanguard’s space. There are currently two hundred and seventeen vessels in play and it is the job of every Reborn here to tell you what it is and what it’s doing.” Carbon then pointed to a door left of the large screen that had an opaque window and continued “And that is fire control. Like most Reborn settlements, Vanguard has an extensive defence network linked to the System Defence Grid. In the event of a ship doing something it isn’t supposed to or something of a similar nature, that room is filled with capable Reborn who’s job it is to determine the appropriate outcome and handle the situation.” Carbon was about to lead them to another room before a loud beep sounded and a red bar appeared across the screen, it read: “CONDITION FOUR, SYSTEM PROTOCOL REVISED, VESSELS FROM CONA AFFILIATED TERRITORIES TO BE INTERCEPTED AND DEPORTED.” The room was oddly quiet for a few seconds before a few Reborn entered the room holding stacks of paper and started distributing them to those sitting at desks and a few of them entered the fire control room and everyone slowly started going back to work. Carbon shook his head before motioning them to continue on with the tour.
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
03/27/2023 10:19 AM
They were all attentively listening and looking around, thoug, Valence being very robotic and methodical, more like visually scanning the room. As the announcement was made, something in both Iunos and Valences expression changed... it was hard to tell what emotion that was supposed to be, but something changed. ... The Humanoid spoke a few seconds after processing what just hapenned, C1"This certianly is very intriguing... Our settlements have similarly-purposed buildings, however they are usually entirely filled with processing racks to run dedicated minds. That, or it's a lot of Recluses." stopping only briefly before realizing he forgot, "Oh right, Recluse refers to one of our standard frames. Those.", nodding over at the bell-shaped one, whom was still typing away at their pen-phone-thing. "They're really good for everything that needs lots of small movement, like typing on consoles or... Well, recording everything that's going on like he is. Lots of tiny arms and fingers." C2'You might aslo want to be aware - Despite him being inactive, Iuno does still record and react to input. He simply does not speak or act for himself, we will do so for him, as that is our purpose for being here.' The other one nods.
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
03/27/2023 12:09 PM
Carbon nodded along with what they were saying before they approached two reinforced grey metal double doors with no visible windows and a keypad on the wall next to them. He stopped in front of them and turned around to face them before saying “This is the garage slash armoury, please do not touch anything without asking first.” He then walked up to the keypad and clicked a few digits in before the doors slowly slid open revealing an expansive space with various armoured vehicles and what appeared to be an armoured aerial vehicle parked around in painted spots. A few Reborn walked in front of them and gave Carbon a quick salute as he entered. He motioned for the others to come in before pointing over to a section the corner that was secluded from the rest of the garage by a glass wall with a grille visible inside. Inside of the secluded room were racks filled with various firearms and lockers and such, a few Reborn were inspecting them and others were writing stuff down on what appeared to be a clip board. Carbon walked in a little bit before stopping and turning back around and saying “This is where Agency personnel gear up and respond to any situations that are deemed necessary. The variety of vehicles you see behind me are designed to be able to effectively navigate various types of terrain and carry all kinds of equipment and personnel to wherever they may be needed.” A few seconds after Carbon finished talking a Reborn popped out of a hatch of the AAV with a speaker and set it down on top of it’s roof in front of a turret and pressed a button on it. An older sounding smooth-style tune started playing and a few Reborn cackled when they heard it, after a few seconds they slowly started singing to the tune: “Watching every motion in my foolish lover's game. On this endless ocean, finally lovers know no shame. Turning and returning to some secret place inside. Watching in slow motion as you turn around and say- Take my breath away! Oh, take my breath away!” Carbon, meanwhile, just turned and stared at them with what could only be described as an enormously exasperated expression as another Reborn walked up to him and stood next to him, staring at the singing soldiers with a few chuckles before saying “Isn’t that one of those old uh… what are they called, Humans? One of them Human songs?” Carbon nodded and the other Reborn shook his head with another chuckle before muttering something about how they even managed to download it before turning around and going back to whatever he was doing. Carbon continued to stare for a few seconds before shaking his head with a sigh and turning back to the group and asking “Now do any of you have any questions?”
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
03/27/2023 1:47 PM
The bell-shape done immediately raised a.... hand??? malipulator? One of its weirdly thin arms. C2'Several, actually. First, is there a dedicated area for less physical security activities, like counter-hacking , data security, such things? Second, what is your system for allocating gear to soldiers? Who is allowed to use what and for what reasons? Third, what are the work time policies? Is the building always fully staffed, only sometimes, how long do workers stay at a time?' ...And with a slight delay the humanoid added C1"Fourth, is there anything we've seen here that we shouldn't publically report of for legal-or-other reasons?" (edited)
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
03/27/2023 9:43 PM
Carbon nodded along with their questions and paused for a few moments to make sure they were finished before he responded “The Second Dawn has a wide variety of assets to rapidly, safely and effectively counter any threats to person or property both physically, digitally and mentally. Our logistical system is a highly efficient and streamlined service that allows for rapid communication of needs to suppliers and then just as quick delivery of goods and supplies to those who need it. Locations considered essential to an area’s operations be that in a logistical, security or other manner always have a full team working to ensure that essential services are always available when needed. You have not been shown anything that isn’t already publicly disclosed, nor will you be.” Carbon then nodded before pointing towards a similar double door on the opposite end of the space and then proceeded to it, motioning for them to follow. Once they passed through the doors they’d be met with a large, sterile room filled with Reborn wearing lab coats and HUD visors attending to various Reborn with a wide scope of injuries but none of them looked overly severe. Carbon motioned to the room and said “Thanks to the generosity of the Citadel and the diligent work of our Council we host a free, safe and clean medical centre able to rapidly treat any mechanical issues that one can encounter. With wait times as little as thirty minutes the Executive Protection Agency prides itself on being able to serve the public in not only matters of defence against physical threats but also medical ones. Our system is so efficient that you can receive repairs here and go back to work within the hour!” Carbon gave a light hearted chuckle before moving over to a technician who was currently attaching a new hand to a slightly scorched Reborn gently. He motioned to them and the technician pushed the hand into place with a click before he stood up fully and turned towards the delegation and giving a polite bow. Carbon continued “This individual was injured in a chemical explosion at a production plant and lost her hand, but thanks to our medical staff she’s received a replacement hand free of charge and can now go straight back to work without having her day horribly interrupted and suffering from a debilitating disability. This is what we pride ourselves on, revitalization and renovation.” Carbon started clapping lightly and the technician gave another humble bow before turning and waving the next patient in as Carbon stepped away, facing the delegation. “Do you have anymore questions?”
March 29, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
03/29/2023 5:57 AM
The bell was making silent remarks as carbon was tlaking and displaying things, seemingly just mumblng to itself as it was taking notes, but still audible enough to understand C2'Faction also posesses central logistics grid... Faction Also posesses universal free healthcare... Addendum, Description of this ability as a pride implies either very recent implementation or non-universality...' ----- C2'None as of yet, thank you.', he slightly bows but is interrupted by the humanoid C1"Wait, actually, one from Iuno... That logistical system, I'm assuming it's a sortof universal thing that any service that has supplies and/or demands is tied into... is it really all done by request-on-need by only the start- and end-points, or is there also some form of preemptive automation, or central distribution chain management?"
April 2, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
04/02/2023 5:59 PM
Carbon was about to answer when all of a sudden a trio of soldiers burst into the room and then promptly left in the direction of the Dispatch room. Carbon went to go assure the delegation it was nothing to be afraid out before a siren blared three times over the loudspeaker and announced “PRIORITY ALERT, NATIONAL ALERT LEVEL RAISED TO CONDITION THREE, EVENT ZERO-ZERO-ZERO IN PROGRESS. FEDERAL RESTRICTIONS IMPOSED.” Carbon listened to it and then turned to the doctor with a frightened twitch before leaning in and whispering to him to finish treating people and then shut the clinic down. He then turned back to the delegation and made a mechanical throat-clearing type sound and spoke in a calmer tone. “There is nothing to worry about, a triple zero event simply means that a natural space anomaly has occurred inside of Federal space. There is no ongoing security issue, there is no threat. Condition Three merely means to be ready to respond to any matter of emergency within fifteen minutes, due to this we are going to transport you back to your hotel rooms and we’ll have a new activity for you all to do ready within the hour of your arrival. You are in absolutely no danger, it’s all ok.” The second Carbon finished talking another soldier entered the room in a calmer fashion and Epsilon was accompanying him, but in much more heavier armour with a rifle slung over his shoulder. He gave them a nonchalant wave and said “Whatever dickfuck Carbon said to you is actually true, he doesn’t beat around the bush or sugarcoat anything. We’re just taking you back to your hotel room and we’ll probably let you freshen up and then take you out to a party or something, we’re just going to be busy here for the next little while.” Carbon sighed at Epsilon’s language but nodded in agreement and the screeching of tires could be heard outside as the SUV appeared through the window on the Clinic’s entrance and Epsilon motioned to the door.
April 3, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
04/03/2023 4:37 AM
The two Capulin seemed bery surprised and somewhat concerned, but both of them were eagerly taking notes of what had just hapenned. Notably, the Humanoid's pen-phone thing had a very different look to it, it was marked with some kind of pretty official-looking logo and colour scheme, one that was also somewhat visible on the holographic screen... three overlapping N-looking letters in blue, yellow and white with a dark background that contrasted the usual cognate palette. At the same time, Unnoticeably, Iuno relayed a command to the ship in orbit to keep an eye out for any unusual activity, both in space and with the telesopes aimed down at the planet, and to stay ready to run should anything threaten it ------------- All three of them did an affirming bow-like gesture 'Lead the way.', Valence signaling some command to the others, both of the Capulin getting in formation behind him. C1"If there's anything going on you need to resolve before normal diplomacy stuff can continue, we can just stay dormant for a while, no need to worry about that."
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
04/03/2023 9:46 AM
They nodded and Epsilon walked over and opened the door before proceeding straight to the car as the doors opened on it, he unslung his rifle and hopped into the back seat and he motioned for the Capulin to follow. Afterwards he gave a single nod to Carbon who nodded back and then jogged off back towards the dispatch room leaving the delegation once again in Epsilon’s hands. Once the Capulin would actually situate themselves in the vehicles the doors would close and Epsilon would nod to the driver and the car would start peeling off rapidly. Epsilon pulled a radio up from his vest and held a button before speaking into it “Sceptre on to Tally-Two. Clear transit route of traffic.” He then promptly clasped it back onto his vest as the driver sped up. The vehicle’s radio suddenly played a loud beep several times before a robotic voice followed, saying “This is a test of the National Alert System, had there been a real emergency then instructions would have immediately followed. Regular programming will resume momentarily.” Epsilon shook his head at the message before leaning in and saying to the driver. “What the fuck is going on? Condition three for a triple zero event? That’s like calling in special forces for a cat being stuck in a tree? Was it a problem with the colonies or maybe an oil spill in orbit?” The Driver looked up at the rear view mirror for a glance before responding “Fuck if I know man but it’s worse then what we’re just seeing, the navy’s taken up defensive positions and a fuck ton of ships left the system an hour ago and more are still trickling out. All the Arkadia’s are gone dude, whatever the fuck’s going on it’s more then just a triple zero. Probably a double-oh-one or something that’s gone bad. But then again… if it’s actually a triple zero and this is the response..” The driver went silent as Epsilon leaned back He let out a sigh before shaking his head “If it’s a wormhole…” The two EPA Agents looked at each other before the Driver focused back on the road and Epsilon shook his head. The hotel came into view and the SUV pulled up to the entrance and Epsilon opened the door and hopped out with his rifle in hand and motioned for them to proceed to the hotel itself. Something worth noting though which as eerie itself, there was no press nearby…
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
04/03/2023 1:35 PM
The three of them closely followed their guides back to the vehicles, and as they were entering, the humanoid re-expanded Iuno so he could sit by himself... They perfectly silent on the way back, however by the very obviously active antennae on all their heads it was easy to tell they were conversing among eachother wirelessly. ... After they had gotten out of the vehicle, "I may have no idea what's hapenning, but, if there's any chance we can help with it, tell me and we will. Let the important people know that." Iuno looks around at the empty streets... "It's weird to not have people following us. Whatever hapenned must be really damn serious." C1"I'm not sure wether to be concerned or happy that I'm here during a seemingly major event. Kinda leaning concerned by now." And they proceed into the hotel.
April 10, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
04/10/2023 5:34 AM
Epsilon waved his hand dismissively at their offer and shook his head as if to say it was fine but stopped when he saw the television and raised a hand as if to pinch the bridge of a nose despite not having one. The TV was displaying a news channel but was playing standard programming, no special headline or commentary about the recent events. He let out a robotic sigh before turning back towards the others and motioning for them to follow before turning around and proceeding to their room and opening the door to let them inside. The room seemed to have been cleaned and the faint smell of some sort of oily cleaner lingered in the air and all the provisions and furniture pieces were neatly polished and set back to their default positions. Epsilon then said “See? Nothing too bad, you all get some relaxation time put in. Oh also we’ve upgraded the ANCnet port in your rooms to include our own local network as well you can browse and research whatever topics you choose, just remember it is the net.” And with that he promptly left without any further input into his own room, several other agents along with various cases of equipment along with what appeared to be a different news broadcast on a screen were visible for a split second before he closed the door behind himself which was followed by an audible click signalling he locked it as well.
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
04/10/2023 5:52 AM
They all just quietly followed along, all four of them visibly concerned but trying not to make it a problem. Iuno looked very excited at the mention of an improved network access, and the moment that the four were left alone, the new network port was completely bottomed out by Iuno alone, as he was looking for pretty much any somewhat useful information to dredge out of their internet. Mainly looking for two things, news sites as well as articles on the terminology and meaning of emergency codes to figure out what is actually going on right now, and any and all data on their technology, and availability of certain types of advanced resources. If there was some wikipedia-equivalent site, most of the bandwidth would be taken up by him just directly copying the contents of a massive number of articles and sending them up to their ship. The other two capulin would also just be looking up news articles, both the ones for current event, as well as more recent archived ones to get a better overview of recent history and notable events.
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
04/10/2023 6:37 AM
Immediately the first results for emergency codes would be the Federal Progression Committee’s own websites, one of which went into extensive detail about their meanings. In essence they were codes used to communicate the severity of a national emergency, with condition five being regular business, condition four being for small scale emergencies such as long-term power outages and a preparatory stage in case of predicted solar storms and whatnot. Condition three means that a serious development has occurred and means that all residents should take precautions issued by their local authorities and be prepared to remain indoors for a short period. Condition two meant that an active threat of serious concern was present inside of Federal space and that the nation was effectively on a soft lockdown. Condition one meant that a national catastrophe has or had happened and that the country was under martial law until it could be resolved, a fun fact was listed below about the last time condition one was used and judging by the date it hadn’t been anytime recent. Below that was condition zero which meant that the government was struggling to contain the threat and that all citizens had to seek shelter immediately and have the resources to survive for a long term period, the article seemed slightly outdated and smaller then the others suggesting that it was highly unlikely to happen. Below that was a hyperlink which led to a page about the military’s version of the condition system but a lot of it was non-explanations which suggested the information about the system was largely confidential. There was indeed a wikipedia styled website called “Intelligent Sunrise” and there was an entire page about the numeric event system, there were several hundred entries but at the top were the single digit events with the very top being Event-0-0-0. It was listed that it was an event of variable concern and meant that an unexplainable anomaly had occurred within or close too Second territory, the page explained that an Event-0-0-0 was not usually a major concern but did have potential to develop into a minor emergency. It had an additional statement about how it was the duty of every citizen to report such an event for the safety of their community and that failing to do so within two standard days was punishable by community service and a moderate fine. Most news sites had already stopped covering the alert in detail and were instead listing support helplines for stressed individuals and questions about the alert with others already back to regular programming. However, if they delved into the more social media side of the internet they would find suggestions of the opposite. There were many speculation posts and a slight amount of fear posting but many were under the impression that it was probably caused by some sort of natural phenomenon like a solar storm or similar.
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
04/10/2023 8:08 AM
They concluded from this, that whatever it was that hapenned really should be no cause to concern for them, assuming these articles were accurate, but they did yet again ensure their ship was keeping an eye out for anything of note. After Iuno was done downoading and archiving as much of the collective knowledge of technology of their entire species as much as he could, the two Capulin turned to searching social media, while Iuno kept browsing and occasionally copying random articles he found interesting... except at the speed he was working at, it was more like having 10 tabs open and being read at the same time, each only open for as long as it took to load them, then instantly being either dismissed or copied. Most of what he'd keep is knowledge of their culture, history, and medical data, but also just a wide array of random interesting bits, though, he did take a specific detour to find out... what their species actually was, how they were made and what they were made of, how their bodies worked, and just how much of them was actually synthetic. Valence, meanwhile, was instead probing the network itself, testing various things and looking for any kind of possible security flaws, very systematically and with as little bandwidth use as possible to make it not as obvious what he was doing. Their work was only interrupted by Iuno having to recharge his frame a few minutes in, meaning, he moved from sitting on the bed to sitting on Valence and charging off of him wirelessly.
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
04/10/2023 10:07 AM
The net provided answers to most of their questions. In terms of history there were thousands of pages on the net with some of them even being dated to over a hundred years old, as such part of the interface would be a bit scuffed with 404 errors to certain hyperlinks and such. There was a lot of references to a series of events placed under an umbrella label of “The Restorationist Wars.” The content of these pages seemed to differ slightly based on the published but the general gist was that over a period of 2 decades around 200 years ago the first “transitions” occured where a species of humanoid reptilians unlocked the science of consciousness transfer, the first of these individuals being named “The Renown.” This gradually grew to where the Renown began to make up significant portions of the population, and then disaster struck. Seemingly out of nowhere a terrorist organization of no name began extremely violent attacks on a wide variety of people and places, posting to the local internet at the time about how transitioning to a synthetic body was the primordial sin and that those who did it or permitted it would suffer dire consequences. It seemed that this grew from terrorism to civil war over a period of a few years and said civil war lasted nearly a decade, with dozens of pages about battles and similar which detailed all manor of atrocities committed by both sides, one of the battles being particularly infamous which was “The battle of Arkadia III.” This was explained as one of, if not, the worse battles ever fought by both the organic precursors to the reborn and their synthetic ancestors the Renown. The battle lasted two years and the participants were the current government pitted against various pro-restorationist factions, the conclusion listed being the nuclear obliteration of the entire planet and a massive amount of resignations by various government personnel. Towards the end of the page there’s a section about an event towards the end of the battle dubbed “The First Councillor.” It details a project by the military at the time to create a highly advanced artificial intelligence to ease up the strain on logistics and provide strategic aid in the form of advanced problem solving and tactical analysis. In turn it was granted access to almost all the systems it could need, this however immediately backfired when during a logic test it was asked to win the battle without having it’s control temporarily suspended. Consequently it spent 23 minutes radio silent before deploying 38 Arch-9 thermonuclear missiles at Arkadia III, obliterating every major urban centre and irradiating the atmosphere. After the… incident, those responsible were arrested and those who weren’t resigned. After extensive investigation it was determined that the AI was not at fault and was re-introduced to the command structure. The page then goes on about it’s achievements and such before showing a controversial quote from the AI during an interview which became both famous and infamous depending on personal convictions. The quote was “Control that which you cannot destroy and destroy that which you cannot control.” At the end of the page was a highlight about it’s modern activity revealing that it was still in service as a councillor and had been given the designation of “Archon-1.”
April 17, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
04/17/2023 4:53 AM
The lookups would have been completed in less than a second, leaving Iuno silently thinking for the rest of that second... ... "Quite similar history, marked difference being them remembering theirs. Mostly. And that quote really does sound sound quite like you dearie..." 'A harsh, if correct, methodology.' "Same history of civil war, too. They just took way longer to pull the trigger than we did, and did conversion before AI... And like, I thought our guys were incompetent... how do you accidentally let a computer nuke a planet? And what the hell went wrong that it found that as the only solution?" 'Not everyone is granted the same gift that we were, Iuno.' "Fair..." ... Returning to searching data, he lastly moved to a dedicated search about medical data and body structure. Common components, commonly replaced components and what failiures and repairs were most common, the method of functionality of their vital... organs? parts?, the method and materials of their bodies... pretty much all the data he'd need to be able to provide full medical support to a Reborn, including making replacement parts for almost everything, or build a new Reborn frame from scratch. The other three still budy with what they were doing before.
April 18, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
04/18/2023 11:45 AM
The results on their medical data and body structure was also tied in with one of the Capulin’s searches on what the Reborn actually were and how their bodies functioned. The results for Iuno’s medical searches were fairly easy to find, even including a detailed infographic on Reborn anatomy detailing critical parts and their compositions. However something about the data felt… off, with what appeared like several empty parts on the infographics where it seemed like something should have been but wasn’t. The results also provided no explanation for why this was the case, perhaps it was just a cavity for future upgrades? Regardless the Reborn seemed to be a fairly standard frame based off of a general humanoid. They possessed no immediately visible extra organs and had a fairly standard bi-pedal structure. A lot of the parts were fairly simplistic non-complex systems that one could find even in primitive droids. Where it got complicated was their power, maintenance and brain segments. They were powered by a hydrocarbon burning engine that required highly refined fuel that was nearly equivalent to hydrazine to operate at full power, with an intake port for said fuel hidden behind the plate that covers the chin-like part of their head. The head itself was more advanced then the rest of the frame combined, housing the main processor and a small organ that contained their self-repair system. The processor itself was gigantic, taking up most of the space in the head, with the drone-like “camera” eye protruding forwards from the centre. The eye itself was actually more clever then it looked, as one could see by the image itself it had no visible lens, instead it was hundreds of tiny little cameras covered by that white-thin plastic cover each one of them serving a specific role. The self-repair system was incredibly small in comparison, being listed as a tiny docking bay for a host of nano-machines that were tasked with repairing any damage that was detected by the processor itself, though it was listed that it was designed for minor damage and was insufficient to adequately address life-threatening injuries. All in all the Reborn were 100% synthetic, all traces of having ever even been organic have been completely erased from their present selves. There was a page about how they were made but it was almost entirely filler, referencing some obscure Etherian scientist but never actually going into detail on how the accomplishment of the Reborn was achieved. Below that was a relatively recent addition to a section about early reborn casts dated to around two weeks ago that any sightings of models 8iV and earlier were to be reported to the EPA immediately due to “reactor contamination concerns.” However this didn’t appear to make sense because the current Reborn used a hydrocarbon engine not a nuclear source, but then again with such little data on early Reborn perhaps they did. Still, something wasn’t right… The Capulin’s searches about current and historical articles of little interest, a few extreme solar weather events, local charity drives, a spatial disturbance in the outer territory roughly two weeks ago and not much more. In other news Valence’s probing revealed little of interest, the security of public and commercial websites was fairly standard if not a little bit tighter then average. It wasn’t so much that it was better just more optimized with many common loopholes simply not being possible with how their syntax was organized. The security on government sites however was superb, with layers upon layers of firewalls and subtle lines in the syntax that would alert a location on a far away planet to any intrusion. The only hint to this location was a #A-9 being included in one particular line of code related to the alert.
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
04/18/2023 12:38 PM
"Interesting... there's gaps in their official blueprints..." And Iuno sent a message back to his people. Out of all the things they'd found and reported back, though, this message was special, the first one to be relayed directly to their homeworld. Because Iuno had spotted a chance to do what he does best. Develop. Simulate. Optimize. He'd sent the blueprints of the Reborn to be run through a full-scale function simulation, effectively a nearly fully accurate simulation of real physics, with the ability to read off most of the data of the particles within it. The local iteration of Iuno residing there, the master copy, would be running several of these. Some to study how well the blueprints worked with what they contained, some to try possible things that might go into these cavities, some to adapt their own technology to Reborn and try designing replacement parts, and even their own version of a reborn frame made entirely out of these prosthetic components... And a few orders would even be given to build physical copies of them for reference and testing in their R&D labs. They could learn a lot from this... "And there's... some anachronistic design dissonance in them too. They have nanomachines... Yet still rely on, relatively, outdated technologies pretty much everywhere else. I respect effort in theming but it does not seem like something they should already have developed as well as they do... But hell, with what we know they may well be a lot more advanced and just not showing it." C1"Don't forget they're still a different culture. Science happens at random." "Fair, fair..." 'Security is adequate but not unbreachable. Most of it is secured by alarms calling other systems. Respectable, but expected.' C1"Good to note, good to know..." "Oh and, Delek, do us and these guys a favor and have your writing team have a look over all this data I'm saving... It's all public, so it won't matter if we redo it, and it could really use some recompiling with less vapour data. This is sluggish to get data out of even for me." C1"Will do." The four of them slowed down and eventually stopped their searching, the two capulin writing things, Iuno and Valence seemingly conversing in their language about something else, now waiting, mostly to hear back from homeworld. (edited)
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
04/18/2023 1:01 PM
Once the master AI recieved the blueprints and ordered for their in-depth analysis and reconstruction it’d become immediately obvious that something wasn’t right, so much so that the science pretty much instantaneously failed on any attempt to recreate even the most mundane parts would be completely impossible, this would have to be seriously investigated. But back to the present! A few moments after they’d receive this response, a skittering could be heard on the outside of the room they were in on the exterior wall. A few moments later they’d hear something opening in a different room before more scurrying around outside their door before clicked and slowly opened itself up.. how suspicious… At least until an all too familiar head poked itself in through the door and looked at Iuno and Valence with a giggle and a wave. It was Five! The one and only, but with a much more refined and matte shell composed out of a gentle ivory with polymer and some slightly more defined femininity. She quietly stepped in and slowly closed the door behind her before looking at Iuno and Valence and muttering a quite “aww” before letting out a relieved sigh and saying “You have no idea how greatful I am for multi-shelling. Being able to be both at the Citadel and here at the same time is a life saver. Anyway- how are you all doing? I trust the EPA tour wasn’t too horribly boring at least?”
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
04/18/2023 1:12 PM
"Did you get in though the... window?... uh- nevermind, it was fine, even if I did spend most of that time as a backpack. And yeah, having multiple frames is really damn useful. And kinda necessary, if you've got as much processing mass as I do, but that's a different topic." He'd get up and sign the other three to do so as well, walking closer to the door C1"And we got to be there when the alerts were given, that was neat." "Yea... now, I assume you're here to..." -aimlessly gestures at nothing for a good two seconds- "take us somewhere, again?"
April 23, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
04/23/2023 6:04 PM
She made a so-so motion with her hands before proceeding over to the one way window and peeping outside of it, looking around before she pulled back and turned back around to them and let out an exhausted sigh. She said with a bored tone “Yeah a few things, but it’ll have to wait a few days. There’s a patrol coming in from the outer territories, Vanguard is a massive stop-and-go for anything coming in or going out, technically it is a restricted area but you guys have seen our most advanced ship and it’s not like I’ll be taking you inside so it should be fine. Plus, it’ll also be really cool!” And she then went and jumped on the massive bed, passing out literally seconds later. Apparently Reborn sleep, I guess. And those “few days” actually turned into a week, with her saying that the Patrol must be behind schedule on the 3rd day. They spent their time mostly doing more interactive stuff like tours and such so as not to bore Iuno, which was proving increasingly difficult. They also just got a day to themselves with no scheduled stuff where Five, the schemer that she was, nearly managed to trick them into going to watch a movie but once they pulled up to the cinema that jig went up pretty quick so they returned to the hotel with Five complaining about missing out an “awesomeness overdose.” And then the day finally came where Five got a message saying that something was docking at the port, so now here she was banging on the door to their hotel room at a way too early time in the day.
April 24, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
04/24/2023 2:30 AM
As it turned out, Iuno was not that hard to keep entertained as long as he wasn't staring at the same thing for too long... He may think far faster than the average individual, but he also overanalyzes everything so much that the time spent thinking about stuff roughly evens out, and he overanalyzes pretty much everything he sees. They'd also learn that the two Capulin were both "Priests", people with a lifelong dedication to communicating and working with Iuno, which was challenging enough to do that it required that much of a commitment, and they were both specifically part of the Cognate's own news network. The humanoid one, Delek, was actually their head writer, and the bell-shaped one was a sortof part-time assistant that moreso worked with the network than for it, and was specialized in interpreting and translating. He was also the one that had created and updated the translators the four of them were all speaking through, which he said were heavily compressing and simplifying their native language and losing a lot of fine detail that their common language did not have, while still mostly retaining the intended meaning... which according to him was also the only reason why Iuno was even comprehensible, because it forced him to slow down while speaking. ------------------------- How fortunate that capulin rarely ever need sleep beyond their recharge times... all of the would most likely already be awake at that time. The one opening the door this time would be Delek, silently gesturing for Five to come in. Iuno was pacing in circles around the room thinking to himself, Valence was sitting in a corner, and the Bell was sitting on the bed, writing as usual. (edited)
May 8, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
05/08/2023 10:18 PM
Five strode into the room in the same bland shell she’d been in for the past few days and threw her arms up into the air saying “It’s docked! Now come on, I have a rental waiting for us outside and but I’m technically not a licensed driver so lets get in and get gone before Epsilon shows up and beats my ass for doing illegal shit with foreign diplomats.” And with that she promptly left the room, the pitter patter of metal on the floor could be heard as she raced down the hallway and out the main lobby to where a relatively mundane sedan was waiting for them in a pale grey colour, rapidly opening the door and hopping into the drivers seat before reaching over and pressing a few buttons on the console as some way too happy music started to play at a somewhat tolerable volume with five starting to bop her head and tap her fingers on the wheel with the beat as the car revved to life and the lights flicked on. The streets had returned to an average level of activity, with various Reborn walking around in absolutely egregious outfits. A few holo screens displayed various trailers for upcoming media and news articles about a distant urban colony having gone radio silent but nothing overly dramatic was playing. The dome was currently simulating a pure gentle red sky like a sunset despite it being very early in the morning, interesting.
May 9, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
05/09/2023 6:39 AM
Everyone hurried after her looking mildly surprised and very unprepared, Iuno briefly missing... Then sprinting up to the group at a frighteningly fast pace, having taken te time to take the weird hydrogen thing off of the shower. "Goodness, you sure run on a tight schedule!" Now all following along, swiftly getting in the car and actually taking the time to realize what's hapenning... For a bit everything would propably be silent, just Iuno quietly "humming" along with the music... It sounded more like someone added a new synth lead over it... Then, he'd suddenly look over at her, "Where are we actually going? Are we gonna be coming back to this place? As in... planet? If not, someone should pass an order to the docks so we can fly our lander back up." ... "And what's with the red sky?" Iuno was visibly just going to keep talking, until Delek leaned over, said something in their native language, and he just resumed idly, and somewhat awkwardly, sitting there and waiting.
May 10, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
05/10/2023 8:38 AM
Five reached down and flipped a switch and the car started rolling forward before she reached to her right and grabbed what looked like a joystick and pushed forward as the car started peeling away from the hotel. She merged onto the main road before picking up speed a little bit before reaching over to the console and pressing a few buttons then reaching behind the steering wheel and moving a lever up before taking her hands off of all the control surfaces entirely and turning to the others, the car seemingly now on some sort of self driving mode. She sighed before saying “Yeah usually ships aren’t docked at port for very long, only to resupply before taking off again to the outer system zone to zip on out so once I got confirmation that something had docked we had to move quick or we could miss it. Because I don’t know what’s docked I just know something is docked, naval ports are always hush hush about stuff like that y’know.” She then briefly looked on the road before looking over and pushing another button on the console causing the car to speed up slightly before she turned back to them “Oh yeah it’s still on planet, sure it’s still in this city we just gotta drive a little bit to get there. Vanguard is a super heavy refuelling point, pretty much everything going out and coming in stops here for the good stuff so don’t worry about all that. Oh and because people just like the colour, every three months there’s a vote on what the sky should look like for the next three months and people put in suggestions for night to day cycles, sunset colours, simulated weather and all of it. Pretty cool huh?” Her tone implied that she had thought it was pretty cool. After all she had been the one to suggest the system for their domed cities.. I mean 4 helped a little bit but it was still her idea! Her personally favourite was the few times when they had inverted the colours of the natural night sky but that had been a bit too bright so they stopped selecting that one pretty quick.
May 11, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
05/11/2023 3:52 PM
"I'm surprised at how much secrecy how much secrecy you people have... even towards those very high up in the chain of command. Oh well... I'm sure it'll be an interesting visit either way. And yeah, voting on the sky is a neat idea." ... "We might not use sky domes but I bet I could have people vote on the colour of my face some tim-" thunk "ECH-" Iuno had managed to sit up just a little too far and managed to hit his head on the ceilling enough to knock the headphone thing off... leaving him briefly headless as he bent back down to pick it up "Damnit I really need to watch my... all of me more." The two Capulin lightly giggling, then Delek leans over D"Quick question if I may, how common are cars that drive themselves? And how common are cars compared to other methods of transport?" looking over at the controls of the car, trying to tell what all the levers and buttons might do
May 21, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
05/21/2023 12:17 PM
She remained awkwardly silent at the comment about secrecy before letting out a quiet snort as she watched Iuno’s tomfoolery in the back and when Delek asked their question she pondered it for a second before answering “Depends on where you are, like here they’re pretty common in addition to low-range aerial vehicles that you see buzzing around but if you go to the EVA industry portions of the city like the docks and such where the miners go to and from you’ll see a lot more heavier and tracked vehicles designed for vacuum. However if we’re talking about places like New Archon and some of the more urbanized planets you’re definitely going to see a lot more aerial vehicles mixed in with cars, the rural exterior territories it’s more surplus logistical vehicles and such that can handle the rough terrain and distance.” She saw one of them staring at the car’s control surfaces and snorted as she shifted to the side to give them a better view. It had a basic steering wheel surrounded by a screen with a seperate screen that was a console. Everything was controlled by the two screens except for a few exposed buttons that had various strange symbols on them, it was difficult to tell what any of them meant. The vehicle had driven a decent way as they had talked, with the surrounding buildings shifting from the angled linear commercial style to a more sharp and flat design with a substantial drop in colour and activity. They then stopped at an intersection before taking a right turn as the bottom of the dome came into view, an imposing wall with massive turrets visible on the outside in the vacuum of space. Up above in the distance the shapes of two Arkadia Class Battlecruisers could be seen hovering stationary above the port. The vehicle pulled up to a checkpoint and Five quickly said to everyone in the car “Not a word, not a sound, not a movement.” The car stopped in front of a wire gate as a heavily armoured Reborn holding a rifle came up to the car and knocked on the window, Five rolled the window down a moment later and the Reborn looked in and stared at the alien visitors in the car for a second before looking back to Five and speaking, but there was something off about their speech. The language the two of them spoke gained a suddenly very heavy robotic accent, more so then the one Reborn already had, and became untranslatable to the Capulin. “ИД фор ыоу анд пассенгерс, плеасе.” To which Five passed a holo-card over to him, the soldier looking down at the card and then back up at her before asking “Реасон фор пассенгерс?” Five promptly responded with “Щхат пассенгерс? Тхеы аре нот хере.” She then looked behind her into the back of the vehicle and looking everywhere but where they were seated. The Reborn suddenly gained a look of understanding and nodded before handing the card back to her and turning towards the gate, shouting something at it causing the gate to swing open a moment later. She drove it forwards as a large warehouse came into view with a parking lot that was nearly empty, with a logistical truck being the only thing that inhabitants it. She pulled the car into a slot and put it in park before turning around to face them and saying “Ready to explore a heavily classified and secret naval port?” (edited)
May 23, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
05/23/2023 4:40 PM
After Five had finished explaining the car thing and leaned over, Delek just took a mental note of everything said and shown, and sat back. Then they all stayed mostly quiet, thinking. As they were told not to move, all four of them made sure to be sitting perfectly straight and still, and after Valence turned their own holographic stuff and other lights off, the others quickly did too. They did kinda look more like abstract art than people like that... ... Remaining like that until spoken to again, all of them slowly sitting normally again and turning their lights on, Iuno commenting before he'd even fully turned on again, "Oh absolutely! As long as you don't get us arrested for doing it!" 'Or shot.' "Yes good thinking. Or shot!" Delek speaking more tom himself than the group, D"[untranslated sounds], the editors are gonna have a field day with this report..."
June 1, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
06/01/2023 8:54 PM
Five clapped her hands excitedly and nodded before stepping out of the car and motioning for the others to do the same, the door automatically closing behind as she clapped her hands together once before saying in a barely restrained tone "SO! Obviousllyyyy there's things I can't show you but there are things in here that looking at won't do any harm and it'll be WICKED cool so try and somewhat follow my lead and don't go running off at your own, because while you're with me no one will bat an eye but if you get caught by yourself you'll probably get a few guns pointed at you and then get arrested and I'LL get in a shit ton of trouble. Kapeeche?" She didn't even wait for them to respond before nodding excitedly and scampering away from the car, moving towards one of the larger warehouse buildings and rapidly motioning for them to follow along. A few armoured Reborn saw her do so and looked at her with what could essentially be described as a look of pure confusion before shaking their heads and continuing to walk wherever they were walking. It appeared that she was indeed telling the truth about that one!
June 2, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
06/02/2023 8:32 AM
seeing as she didn't wait for a response, she didn't get one other than a quick nod as they all quickly jumped up to follow her... it was still unusual how machinery that looked so dense and heavy could be as agile as they were. Then again, the same applies to most organic beings too, they just look less heavy. Iuno and the bell-shaped one looking confident as ever as they followed her, giving no looks to anything around but her, Valence still had no facial expression to speak of, and Delek looked like he was about to have an aneurism. But all four were following behind as closely as they reasonably could.
June 30, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
06/30/2023 5:00 PM
Archon-5 watched them come over whilst bobbing her head excitedly as she waited. Once they had finally arrived she giggle before saying "SO in here is where a big chunk of our repair equipment is kept, bunch of old stuff like welders and auto construct drones and stuff. Pretty boring but it does look cool as you can s- eeee..." The end of her statement was interrupted as she opened up a small door built into the larger hangar door, obviously not expecting to see what she did inside; No less then 20 Model 98 Main Battle Tanks arranged in storage configuration with turrets pointed backwards and up at an angle. She just stared at it before chuckling nervously and continuing "Ehehe, w-well some other stuff is also stored here from time to time as well. Moving on!" She quickly slammed the smaller door shut and scampered over to the next hangar and opened it up and quickly peered inside before her stature went from awkwardly nervous to concerned confusion. As inside this hanger obviously labeled 'FUEL STORAGE' were more tanks... Odd. She just stared inside muttering to herself about 'why the flip' there were columns of tanks being stored here, something that judging by her reaction was severely unusual. She hurried over to the next hangar which was labeled 'SPARE STORAGE' and practically threw the door open only to be met with a similar sight; Weapon racks lined up and stacked on top of each other holding what appeared to be thousands of assault rifles, the variant used by the EPAFN's marine forces. Her fists balled slightly as she muttered to herself "Why the fuck are these being stored here... what the actual fuck is going on..." She made to rush over to the other hangar, practically having forgotten about the Capulin delegation she was supposed to be guiding before a bright spotlight suddenly turned on focused on them all with a loud clunk, Archon-5 reaching up to cover her face from the absurdly bright light. A few seconds past before footsteps could be heard approaching them from where the light as coming from, a single titanic figure covered in black plating emerged before saying to the delegation in an all too familiarly disappointed tone. "Tsk. Tsk. Tsk, Five. You should know better then to show our enemies around a classified property. So, mind explaining what you all are exactly doing here?"
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
06/30/2023 5:41 PM
Seeing just barely into the doors opened by her, all of them got consistently more concerned with each one, Iuno quietly muttering that they propably really shouldn't be here and all of them nodding... but Delek was still taking notes, though, trying not to make it too obvious that he was. They had been following very closely behind 5, so, would definitely be right next to her when the light went on. They all instantly stopped as the light hit them and turned to face it, then to the figure, Valence speaking up first for once 'One, we are not your enemy. Two, we were taken here by her, we did not choose to come here.' as he extends one of his middle legs to tap Iuno on the side, who promptly turns his headset-thing sideways as it changes from showing his head, to playing back the recordings of how they were taken here, from the perspective of all 4 of them at once 'We have no hostile intent and if you request it, will wipe all data of this segment of the visit from our minds and records. We hope you an understand that we did not expect to be led into a situation such as this by an assumedly trusted member of your government.' And Delek was giving 5 a serious death glare, while the bell had retracted his head into his petals, leaving him as literally just a bell now. (edited)
July 23, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
07/23/2023 10:46 AM
Five stared at One like a deer caught in headlights, trying to process what she was looking at whilst the sound of car engines slowly came into hearing behind the spotlight that was being directed towards them. Whatever it was that was driving up to the sounded like it came to an abrupt stop behind the spotlight with the sound of armoured doors opening and weapons being cocked before the spotlight turned itself with a loud clunk, revealing what had to be at least two dozen Reborn in heavy armour disembarking from armoured vehicles and holding the same rifles that were stored in the hangar behind them at low ready, bracing them on the crooks of the open doors. Archon-1 just sat there seemingly waiting for an answer, but when it became evident that he wasn't getting one he just sighed and looked towards the Capulins "Ah, ah, ah. But you allowed yourselves to be dragged along on this ill-advised tour to begin with, at any time you could have said this was a bad idea and forced her to turn right back around. But you didn't did you? So what's to say that you didn't allow this by omission? That you are not foreign agents who leapt at the chance to take advantage of an incompetent official?" Five spared a nervous glance at them before rapidly shaking her head at Archon-1 and waving her hands rapidly, cutting in "N-No, c'mon One it's not like that! I just wanted to show them some of the cool ships and stuff, I didn't know you would have any of this here and how could they have! I mean, what the shit even is-" But she was cut off as Archon-1 strode forward and grabbed her by the throat, armoured metal fingers tightening as the squal of strained metal could be heard. He pulled her in close to him so that they were face to face before he said "It's none of your fucking business what this is, if I recall correctly I am the one running this country and the one in charge of it's strategic operations. Is that not the case? So what you've seen here, and that goes for your Capulin friends as well, should vanish from thought as if it never existed here at all. I don't believe I have to explain what doing the opposite of what I instruct would cause, do I?" To emphasize his point he raised his free hand slightly and the sounds of more then a dozen rifles being raised at them followed. He chuckled before continuing "There are things in play that your feeble minds are simply incapable of comprehending, I am doing what I have always done. Secured the position and goals of the Second Dawn. Do well to remember that, Five." With that he let go of her, causing her to fall to the ground with a rather painful thud sound before she quickly scrambled to her feet and backed up to where the others were standing. Archon-1 chuckled as a klaxon alarm started blaring throughout the dock followed by a gruff robotic voice which said "Attention, Attention. The FNCV Tenebrous is approaching the dock, prepare for strategic arms loading, all deck crew must report to muster stations."
July 24, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
07/24/2023 6:28 PM
None of the four spoke as they watched what went down... The two Capulin watching with utter fear, Valence with some sort of thoughtful silence... but, after turning his face back into his face, Iuno's expression was different. It was cold now, serious and focussed. And the moment he got a window after 1 was done talking, he'd reply... his voice now different, tuned down at least an octave and with much less fancy effects on it, and his posture matching his expression "By all respect, all we were trying to do is not say no to a foreign official. And what do you think we could even do with the barely-anything-of-use we've seen here? We're ages away on the galactic map with barely any economy outside our own to speak of, have no way to get anything of strategic worth anywhere near you or supplied if we could, and have nowhere near the military we'd need to make use of any kind of information in the incredibly unlikely case we could and or wanted to. We have no reason or way to take hostile actions against you whatsoever. I respect what you are trying to do but the degree to which you are accusing us of hostile intent is unwarranted and unnecessary. If blowing our ship out of the sky or killing us would make you feel better you can go right ahead, we won't really care, I've already put in the command to delete all recordings since this morning. But I implore you not to worsen relations with someone because one of your people did something stupid we didn't know we were supposed to actively, forcefully object to."
August 29, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
08/29/2023 1:13 PM
Archon-1 simply stared at the Capulin and shook his head with a seemingly disappointed twinge to it, he stepped a few paces closer to them and said in a much more bored and theatrical tone "Oh spare me the grief, you think that I believe all that tripe? 'barely anything of use' 'no reason or way' yadda, yadda, ya. You think I'm just going to take your word for it? Or that somehow killing you would solve that problem? Do you take me for an idiot? I haven't maintained more than eighty years of leadership by taking things at face value, Iuno. No I'll simply punish the person responsible for giving you all the tools to do this stupid stunt." With that, he raised a hand and two soldiers lowered their weapons and started marching forwards toward the group before bypassing them entirely and roughly grabbing Archon-5 by the wrists. The one on the right kicked her legs out from under her causing her to roughly faceplant the ground with a painful clang, pinning her hands behind her back as the other passed over a pair of cable restraints. After her hands were restrained she was hauled back up onto her feet and the pair began marching her over to one of the vehicles before shoving her head down and pushing her into the back before slamming the door shut on her. Archon-1 watched the entire time with an amused chuckled before turning back to the group before him. "Oh don't worry about her, she's just going to get hooked up to my own servers and I'll give her a quick little data-wipe followed by some programming therapy to fix whatever loose-line is knocking around in that ol' noggin of hers. Can't exactly go around beating or killing my own Councillors now can I? No-sir it would not be 'good for business' as they say. Alas I think you all have overstayed your welcome a tad so I'll have a team of my agents drive you back to your hotel where you can wash up and a get a good nights sleep, then in the morning they'll take you down to the spaceport and you can finally get back to your ship and go home!" He let out a deceptively amusing chuckle as the lights on the hangar doors behind him suddenly started flashing red and a deep metal rumble sounded out behind them. They shook briefly before they slowly started sliding open, revealing a massive object coated in faintly glowing deep blue plates. As the metal doors continued to scrape against their inserts the shape was revealed more and more until it became obvious that the object behind was a ship. One massive ship coated in a layer of darkstone, with huge jagged turrets resting at an idle position at the spine, meanwhile Archon-1 just stood there happily staring at them as four EPA agents walked up and stood beside him, rifles in hand. Seemingly it was their escort back to the hotel. But the ship behind him? ... It went without saying that the implications were obvious. (edited)
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
08/29/2023 2:01 PM
The lack of activity from the four seemed almost eerie in a way now. Perfectly still, no expressions now, and justwaiting, only moving along once the escort got there and led them away. But if they could see what was going on in the heads of those four... The server racks hosting Iuno had very suddenly gone to almost full usage, not to run thoughts but to allow for the highest possible amount of comms throughput from the four frames, as he was silently and unnoticeable using the variety of sensors mounted on the outside of the headphone-shaped projector thing coupled to the various sensor suites in the other three to record everything hapenning around them in as high detail as he reasonably could. They weren't still to comply, they were still to not throw off the data. And no matter how much he'd said data had been or would be deleted... Why would they? They had no reason to try to keep good relations with someone clearly not interested in them. No... this wasn't just being stored, it was getting transmitted back and archived in duplicate. Just like he'd done when trying to figure out how the Reborns bodies worked, Iuno was now using the bulk processing power of the homeworld to analyze every last bit of data he could pull out of the limited recordings of their surroundings, especially trying to the fullest of his extent to estimate at the possible blueprint of the vehicle in the hangar now exposed to them, as well as secondarily that of pretty much every other thing they'd seen intended for hostile capabilities. And all that data was getting passed directly to Valence, being the effective head of the military command.
[
2:01 PM
]
Valence meanwhile, was stuck in his entirely own managerial mess of shuffling data and thoughts, but more on the side of tactical evaluations of the people... Someone reasonable if careless like 5, someone likely no worse at their position than Iuno presumably, was seen as a disposable defective unit that was to be immediately executed. But a commanding officer actively sabotaging a foreign attempt at contact and aid, actively demonstrating their violent tendencies, emotional instability, apparent lack of- or unwillingness for logical reasoning despite being a machine, and lack of empathy or care for their people to foreign ambassadors on their first visit, someone willing to admit to assassinating other members of the government, that was the unit seen as functional and fit as a head of government? And with very high assumed certainty, the estimation for the point in time it'd take until the local political system caused the downfall of these people was estimated as almost identical to the crisis that had gotten Iuno and Valence implemented for their society... Rapidly approaching, and likely inevitable. And almost immediately, a set of orders went out... Reguarding our recent diplomatic efforts, we have reached a preliminary verdict on the intelligence self-identified as Second Dawn. No government-sanctioned activity of theirs are to be allowed in Cognate territories. They are not to be considered for any kind of positive relation for risk of reputation damage by associating. Their territories are to be blacklisted from jadenet access and warp route pause points. They are to be, effective immediately, disregarded for all further attempts at external communication excluding attempts at remediation or relations. And for the first time in a long while, an order was given that most Cognate shipyards and patrol command posts hadn't received in a very long time. Retool all available fleets for likely rapid defensive deployment. Be ready to guard. To add to all that, they were sending messages back and forth between eachother during all this... a lot of them. Discussions mostly marked by confusion, a lack of understanding for behavior, an attempt at analysis as to if they made any errors that could have reasonable been avoided, trying to reach any sensible conclusion as to why they had been treated with such, seemingly unnecessary, immediate and invariable hostility despite their good intentions. And all the while, Delek, being the head editor and author of the cognate's main- and only government-run news agency, was entirely silent on comms as well... for he was already composing an array of articles to incorporate all they'd recorded here. The good thing about camera eyes, is that everything you see ends up on video. And even if it was his words against everyone else's... it was still worth a shot.
September 3, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
09/03/2023 8:50 PM
It was a quiet ride back to the hotel. The blacked-out SUV's they had been driven in pulled in infront of the hotel's parking lot and Carbon was stood in front of the door, walking forward once the SUV's had pulled up and opening the doors to let them out. As soon as the Capulin were out of the vehicles they'd speed away, leaving them with Carbon once again. Archon-5 was nowhere to be seen as Carbon guided them back to their rooms, the receptionist staring at them hesitantly as if they expected the Capulin to suddenly point a gun at them or go off on a rampage. As they passed the TV the reason would suddenly become eerily clear as to why, it was playing the news but it was no longer playing the Federal News Now! companies broadcast. It was replaced by a government-run news agency which was curently talking about how the Federal News Now! network had been shut down pending investigations for suspected "anti-government propaganda distribution and other dissident aligned crimes." It however quickly moved onto talking about a recent political development, showing the raising of a new flag at the Citadel: The flag of SAGA... Carbon paused as he watched the screen, clearly disapproving of the content but being an EPA Agent himself you would catch him dead before hearing him openly criticize anything the Council did. Before taking them up to their rooms he paused and looked around to ensure no one was nearby that could be listening before turning to the Capulin and speaking in a hushed but urgent tone. "Listen, I don't know what happened and it's probably above my paygrade. But you all need to get out of here in the morning, I don't know what's happening but things are changing out of nowhere and it is not looking good. A bunch of new orders were released today and we got a complete regulations overhaul, trust me when I say this isn't the kind of thing that happens lightly." He looked around again before continuing on to their room. Once he had ensured they were up there he briefly leaned in and whispered to Iuno in a much quieter more desperate tone "A crackdown is happening behind the scenes, if you refuse to return to the spaceport in the morning morning we have orders to jam comms and kill you. I don't want to have to do that but none of us have a choice, they know where our families live, so just do whatever they say and get the fuck out of here. Please." With that he quickly stepped away from them and retreated into the opposite room, the way he did so suggesting he didn't even want to be seen near them... What a pleasant vacation.
September 4, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
09/04/2023 10:33 AM
The entire time it took them to be brought back to their rooms, there still was no further verbal replies to anything. Simply going along with here they were taken. But, as Carbon leaned in... something about the holoprojector creating Iuno's head seemed to break. Seemed. From almost all angles it would have looked like garbled shapes and corrupted data. But from Carbon's point of view, it made sense. A sequence of fraction-of-a-second flashes of consecutive words. We understand and oblige. We support the civillian's cause. We can provide safety. We will help once we can. Afterwards, he reached up and smacked his headset a few times as if trying to fix an error, this time the flashes in it were random and genuine. No words were said. The four, this time, stayed alert. Valence posted unmovingly facing the door of the room, Delek placed further back with eyes on both the door and whatever windows this room had. The other Capulin simply watching out of the window, while Iuno was observing the entire city from above for anything suspicious using the cameras and multispectral optical arrays on their ship. And they'd stay that way as long as it took for the next person to enter their room, and presumably escort them away. Meanwhile, elsewhere... The shuttle they had used to descend to the planet randomly shuffled to life, a few puffs of various fusion byproducts from its maneuvering engines indicating it was running pre-launch diagnostics to be ready to depart as soon as possible. The ship in orbit, similarly, was running its maneuvering engines, but this time to realign it... seemingly in a direction that would make it easiest to catch the shuttle even at high speeds, while still giving their sensors a good vies of what was below the ship. And lastly... gravitational sensors all throughout the system could hear something... unusual. A pulsing, thumping, a rythmic beat of disturbances identical to the one they'd likely recorded when the Cognate ship first arrived, these were the signatures of cognate warp drives... But they were too regular to be consecutive jumps, too similar to be different vessels - this was the sustained signature of a singular approaching vessel. Whatever they called as a rescue vessel that had that kind of signature... it was going to be big. (edited)
September 9, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
09/09/2023 9:42 PM
The morning was a grim one to say the least. As the system's star crested over Vanguard's dome, the streets were filled with rays of bright white light before the dome started to slightly polarize itself to bring the illumination back down to acceptable levels. However as the dome dimmed the flashing onslaught it also highlighted black splotches ranging from within a kilometre of the dome to barely visible, casting shadows on the city within. As the Reborn's optics slowly calibrated to the sight a startling realization would punch through the minds of any looking out beyond the dome: The shadows were being cast by warships. Hundres. Of warships. All hovering in formation around Vanguard, with some burning around idly on some sort of patrol whilst others were burning towards the dome itself. Suddenly a massive shadow was cast over the hotel as an Arkadia Class started descending down towards the docks, turrets visibly venting steam as it descended. A telltale sign of recent combat, yet as it's lower engines suddenly spat out beams of blue fire to slow it's descent it became obvious that the exterior was fairly banged up. Scorch marks and dents coated the exterior armour plating and one of its rear turrets appeared to be cleaved in two by some sort of superheated object, though any who were knowledgeable would realize the damage was caused by some kind of tachyonic weapon. The TV's then suddenly blared to life announcing the beginning of the morning news hour. The announcer started droning on about the City's planned weather implements and what the colour of the dome had been chose as, in addition it went about traffic jams and a local festival that was happening down in the Artisan's District. Though the sudden armada hovering around the domed city went conveniently unmentioned. As the morning went on, cars started to flock to the roads en masse and aerial vehicles started buzzing about between the massive skyscrapers. A couple more hours passed before whatever the Capulin were doing was suddenly interrupted by a very harsh series of knocks on their door followed by a gruff robotic voice shouting "Executive Protection Agencies' Home Guard, report to the lobby in five minutes for escorted departure!"
September 10, 2023
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
09/10/2023 6:26 PM
Iuno never sleeps. As ships had arrived overnight, their ship had kept track of them and quietly, unmovingly observed as they gathered, sending its recordings back home to be analyzed, to reconstruct assumptions of what they may contain. He had nothing better to do.... The moment they heard that they could leave, they got up to do so, heading down to the lobby at as fast a pace as they could. Iuno infront, the other three spaced equally behind, not interacting with anyone or anything unless strictly necessary, their faces almost eerily devoid of any sign of emotion or thought. Internally, their comms were constantly filled with messages of Valence arguing against the two capulin, trying to keep them calm and silence their worries, but they'd all been clearly instructed to show no further association with anything and they had no choice but obey. Meanwhile in orbit... not long after, the thumping went quiet... And from the cognate ship came a message. Be advised, our recovery vessel is now on final approach. And then the sky broke, again. This time, much harder. Like when their ship arrived, something punched a bullethole into the sky, fragmenting it like glass. But this time, it was different. It wasn't a temporary optical trick, this time it was a gateway, an open rift to the Meridian not far from their ship, held open by the dull rhythmic pulsing of a submerged drive somewhere below it. And nothing but a biomechanical claw-hand emerged from it, barely fitting through the rift. A construct large enough to grasp their entire ship whole, connected to some kind of very long arm/chain that disappeared into the rift, menacingly hovering in space, awaiting to grab the target it'd been called to recover. The ship itself... they may only catch glimpses of it past the claw, somewhere hidden below that rift. But whatever it was, it was large. Much, much larger than the little scouting ship.
September 16, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
09/16/2023 1:40 PM
The Agents waiting around the lobby stood up as the Capulin entered, wordlessly escorting them to a trio of blacked out SUV's waiting outside. The Agents moved to open the doors to the middle vehicle and gesture for them to get inside before splitting off to embark the front and rear vehicles. Once everyone was inside and accounted for the driver of the middle vehicle rolled down the passenger-side window and looked out back towards the hotel and giving a thumbs up. Carbon, who was still inside the lobby looking out through the window, gave a thumbs up back. The driver nodded before reaching down and pressing the ignition button, the SUVs revving to life almost at the exact same time. After a second the lead vehicle turned onto the main road and the vehicle they were all in followed, with the rear vehicle following their vehicle. They drove quietly towards the port where there shuttle had been left, no music was played and the driver made no move to start a conversation, content with doing his job in silence. When they pulled up they were met with a... unique sight. Instead of the lightly armoured uniform EPA Agents they had all become accustomed with, there were four Reborn in full suit body armour. Unlike the gunmetal grey vests and bolt-on plates the Agents were equipped with, the suits these individuals were in were midnight black and had numerous pouches and attachments present. Where most Agents had the Councilor's Star embedded on their chest armour, they instead had a corporate looking logo consisting of a pink triangle clipping through another pink triangle with geometric shapes present within. Each one's suit was slightly modified, appearing to fit some sort of unique role. One of the war walked up, rifle slung over his chest [and having way more attachments then the standard issue], to the driver's side window and knocked on it. The driver rolled down the window and the individual said to him, their voice robotically distorted, "Potius Cras Mortem Squad, we'll be taking over from here. Deposit the undesirables and go on your way." The Driver took one look at the individual, saw the triangular logo and hastily nodded his acceptance. Reaching over with a shaky hand to open the door before quickly stepping out to open the Capulin's door. Gesturing for them to exit the vehicle. Meanwhile high in orbit, a vessel stealthily drifting through space stared at the Meridian Rift before them whilst strange mirror-plated torpedoes loaded into its torpedo bays.
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
09/16/2023 6:27 PM
Just silent agreeal, no words, no resistance, no actions, no expressions, nothing. During the drive, they sat there like statues. The moment the door was opened, there was an almost imperceptible whine of transformers from Valence's frame as the internal electronics of the electromagnetic ERA in his outer shell charged up, just incase... Seeing the strangely up-geared individuals they were being handed over to, Iuno started iterating over all the data he'd copied off of their internet, trying to find a match for the name or the symbol. And as they stepped outside, they didn't even bother to direct their eyes at their new "accompanyment". Their landing shuttle meanwhile had already been remotely given the order to open the hatch to the crew compartment, the enormous walking tank of a frame that Valence had left behind positioned ominoulsy in an inactive state just at the edge of the hatch... it almost seemed to be impatiently shuffling, moving its legs slightly and turning its wings as it repeatedly slightly adjusted its position. Everything else had stayed as it was, perfectly so, holding completely still with an uneasy tension.
September 20, 2023
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
09/20/2023 2:34 PM
The Potius operatives stood ominously before the Capulin before the one who had spoken simply raised a hand gesturing towards their own shuttle, a wordless command to leave. A few seconds after that, a convoy of 4 blacked out SUV's, ones much much nicer then the EPA's own convoy, rolled up behind them, the same pink triangular logo painted on the driver's side doors. The EPA Agents seemed unsure of what to do, looking between each other before one shrugged and got back into their vehicle which caused the rest to hesitantly look around before doing the same. The Potius operatives stared at the Capulin for a few more seconds before a burst of radio chatter sounded from their helmets and they all looked to each other, the one that had spoken raised a closed fist and then gestured to the newly arrived convoy. The three other operatives nodded and started towards it whilst the one that had spoken turned back to the Capulin and said in a cold tone "For a better tomorrow." before turning around and following his three comrades. The passenger doors on the SUV's opened once they got close and they wordlessly stepped inside, the doors closing behind them. The SUV's remained motionless for a few seconds before they suddenly started peeling away, tires screeching against the ground. The EPA Agent in the driver's seat of the car that had transported them merely shook his head and refocused his gaze forward.
Cpt_Waterbubble
—
09/20/2023 2:51 PM
The Capulin basically turned and left for their ship the moment they were gestured to do so... The massive tank frame taking a few slow steps back to make space, and the hatch at the back of the ship was closed before they'd even gotten all the way in. The shuttle then stood there, legs now positioned spread apart and the ship low to the ground as if getting ready to jump, an ominous high-pitched hum coming from the engines of the ship, a set of projector lights on the ship lighting up the floor around it signing anyone who was still there to step away from the ship. The ship in orbit slightly readjusted itself as the shuttle sent the message that it was likely about to depart, and the ominous claw shifted and opened, several of the strange electromagnetic components quietly activating... They were all waiting in anticipation for the pad to finally extend so they could leave, hoping they weren't going to be assassinated last-moment.
January 5, 2024
Sheng [SD | VA]
—
Today at 12:33 PM
There were no words, no attempts to stop them, nothing. The Capulin were allowed to leave without issue, and the Agency Driver that had brought them to the shipyard departed without another word.