Welcome to Gaia! ::

Trilla: o.o !

Eecheb: e.e

Micha: . . .

*Keeping Micha close, Nana would attempt to make her way towards Eecheb. The boy seemed to be totally taken in by the fight and didn't care to notice much else. It was the perfect oppertunity for Nana to snatch him up, and so in a few fluid movements of her own, Eecheb and bag would find themselves soon enough in Nana's arms. The boy's immediate response was to bite down on the bags strap, just in case his 'captor' wanted to take it. Upon seeing his mother the boy would blink, but not remove his teeth. The meaning of the word 'endorsement' would have to be explained to the boy later*

Now, don't take this as an endorsement that you can fight with just anyone that wanders in here. I won't have it.

*By now Heine had began his transformation, this would no doubt gather attention from Nana and the others. The brightly colored uniform was supposed to help him win? How? That question was likely to be answered shortly whenever Thanatos and Heine began fighting again*

Ksssshhh~

A considerable amount of time had passed, years it seemed like, since Thanatos had gotten his hands on some of KB's DNA. What drove the young man to experiment with it could not be explained or known by any other than him. The end result, however, was the ability to rebuild the monster with tighter constraints and a manageable level of psychosis. How he had transferred the will from the fleshly recreation to a mechanical shell was a mystery - one that spoke volumes of the blind boy's mastery.

Now, steam was billowing around the latest creation as he stepped down off the assembly line, unceremoniously thrust from his cold mechanical womb into the world. It was there, naked, that he was reborn in a fashion. His structure was on open display, his personality yet to take form in his appearance. Manual tests proved his chassis to be in working condition, lending him to a new machine that grabbed him roughly. Listless, he simply endured the constant prodding and probing, his new body functionally disabled during transit.

They tested his mind, all facets of it. Rigorous tests that he answered honestly to the best of his ability. The end result was an acceptable grade, a reflection that he was bound to protocol and harmless to the few beings that called the sprawling city home.

It seemed years again that he finally 'saw' the light of day, his eyes merely sensors, the light merely an artificial construct. He recognized the light above him as a mimicry of the heavens, and yet, nature was bound to create this simple thing. No part of the light above him had been ushered from nothing. So too, would he be nature corralled to a purpose, no more or less real that the materials that comprised him and the ingenuity that enabled him.

A spiritual revelation.

Finally, the end. A single voice, monotonous and unforgiving - yet distinctly feminine as these things ought to be. It asked him simply what he wished to distinguish himself, an honor afforded to him not very lightly. Thinking about the plethora of options available to him, he found his synthetic voicebox emitting a single word.

"Orange."

Bare, save for the plates that hid his inner workings from sight, the sexless form was clothed in color. Lines and squares of solid orange covered his form as machines expertly tattooed him in a robotic fashion. In the end he was a mixture of orange and metal, his chassis dusted with a less glaring coating that held his default appearance but gave his metal an aged appearance.

Then KB was stamped and set free, put among his brethren to flex his muscles by his own will for his first time. There he did so, instinctively looking to his hands to watch them move. He formed fists, not out of rage, but out of a desire to see his fingers curl and uncurl. He could almost feel the cords in his arms stretching and relaxing, though such must have been imagination as his sense of touch was regulated to a few key areas.

"What do I do now?" He asked the machine that set him among the others - similar models that ignore him. Longing to hear that unforgiving voice again, he yearned for direction. The machine hung in place for a moment, it's heavy arm spinning into a different position before locking and moving away. There was no answer for him on what to do.

With little initiative of his own, he simply glanced sidelong at his brothers and then straightened. Standing, he would wait for an indication for what he was meant to do. Had be been forgotten, or was he simply being impatient? The paint alone did not make him different from the others, for some reason... he'd been given an entire persona.

Orange was a descriptor, that is, the coloration that had been applied to him was all that set him apart from his peers. That and the quizzical stamp on him - the initials KB. Beyond that though, there was little else to describe the reincarnated man.

With Thanatos having arrived, he straightened and felt a desire to smile. Of course, he did not have that ability, but his happiness showed in his voice as it changed. "You are Lord Thanatos." He replied, nodding and then stilling as if nodding had been a mistake.

Looking at the man in front of him he found his memories conflicting. It seemed that he had the default information of his brethren, and yet there was another template that conflicted with it. While Thanatos was assuredly who KB claimed he was, he could tell from his memories that he was also... more.

"You and I are friends. Though, I do not know how that is possible, I have just been assembled."

A name, the name. It summoned forth a myriad of explanations ranging from those intimately connected with his persona to the very definition of the letters. Faced with the meaningless and yet iconic initials, he nodded curtly. "Yes, Thanatos." He confirmed, though whether that was regarding his name or the instruction was left to mystery.

Nonetheless, he would indeed follow the young man into the light of day. Just moving felt wonderful - at least in the sense anything could feel wonderful to him - and the sunlight above was invigorating. Taking advantage of the situation KB looked to the sun directly, his eyes unharmed by its brilliance. "Thank you, Thanatos. You were right, the sun is most enjoyable."

After a few moments he realized that Thanatos wasn't looking around with him, and that the young man was in fact blind. He searched his memory for a reason, cued programming and personal insight arriving to the same conclusion at the same time. His hands, yet not his current hands, performing unthinkable actions. The merciful reprieve from such memories came in the form of decayed data, the visual information affording him as few details as the summary of events pertaining to each date over a span of years he hadn't been in existence for.

Yet had been.

"I am sorry you cannot see it." He said finally, head lowering in resignation as his gaze swept the streets around them.

In spite of how much of KB's artificial neural architecture had been assembled by Than, he had no way of knowing what memories or fragments were coursing through KB's awareness. Perhaps if it were even possible for him to know what the experience of 'being KB' was like, he could have produced a much more... happy incarnation.

"I would not have brought you back from the pits of nothingness if I held a grudge, KB. It's precisely because I have no malice over it that I brought you back." Turning on one foot, Thanatos came about to face the automaton, reaching out and putting both hands on the shoulder's of his new chassis. "Whatever memories you have are there to change your future, not your past. You exist here, not in your memories. Once you grasp that, you'll not only be free again, but you'll be able to help me change the futures of everyone else... the other ones you called friends!" Staring at the difficult to name automaton, Thanatos's face was lit with a blind grin that displayed what looked like pride, excitement, and perhaps even joy. "Enjoy the sunlight my friend. It's winter now, and it's not going to get much sunnier."

He released KB from his pressured grip, if the reborn man could even sense that, and turned his head upward, hearing a distant call in the distance. "Sounds like my little brother is looking for me. Of all the times... ready to meet someone you haven't yet?" Holding his palm upward in front of him, a glowing orb materialized before him, and within moments the illuminator shot skywards, climbing nearly seventy meters before bursting brilliantly above the buildings. It'd be hard to miss unless Eecheb had also decided to go blind in his brother's footsteps. "Let's see what the scamp is after...."

------

More than aware of something going on outside, Mastema didn't bother to move from his throne at all. He had enough intel to know that Than was tinkering with some kind of project, though he had no idea what the result would be this time around. If anything, he wasn't training as 90% of his time was now spent, so Mastema would look into that later. For now, he was content to stay where he was, but not alone. Softly dorsiflexing and relaxing his ankle, his right leg gently bounced, while Trilla sat on his knee. One of his hands constantly kept her steady, while he leaned toward his other arm, resting his cheek on his knuckles. Hopefully, Thanatos wouldn't do anything that was counterproductive to this peace.

Somewhere outside the Citadel, amongst the never ending forest that ringed the war scorched earth that surrounded the once impenetrable fortress city, Lee finished securing his gear to the rucksack placed on the ground. In another life, one only remembered through the horrors of his nightmares, Lee had been the inhuman creature that had brought war to this place, blasting away at it's shielded dome with balls of energy fired from great machines of war, dropping bombs from high in the sky to burn away the forest to make way for his horde of living machines that had fought both the Citadel's defenses and defenders to a literal standstill. At one point, and likely the reason for the eventual destruction of the original shield in place, he had called upon the power of the stars to rain fiery destruction through the atmosphere in a great, orbital, barrage. It had all seemed so right at the time, but looking back he could feel how wrong he had ultimately been. The result of his never ending lifetime of war was a broken and shattered shell of a man, who's original body had decayed so long ago that even with the unlimited supply of memory available to him he could not recall what he had looked like as a mortal man. Drawing a deep breath and sighing to himself Lee tied his padded bed roll to the bottom of his back, securing it with leather thongs that could easily be removed, taking a moment to glance about his camp site.

The remnants of last night's fire were buried under the ground, the shallow pit he had dug for that use had kept the light shielded from prying eyes yet still allowed him to warm his chilled body. The mat of balsam boughs he had thrown down where he had laid his bed roll to prevent the cold earth from pulling his body heat away had been scattered with only a few broken bits littering the floor that would not betray his presence. All in all it looked just as he had found it, minus of course the freshly turned earth where he'd dug and reburied his fire pit.

He had been off living in his own world since his previous self had decided to return to a more simplistic life, dismantling the massive swarm of weapons he had assembled and transferring himself to the body now known as Lee. The peace was a great value to him, focusing not on the cynical maneuverings of powerful beings and semi-deities but rather the simple and selfish desires of keeping him fed and warm. Adjusting the gray wolf fur mantle on his shoulders to rest the rucksacks straps more comfortably Lee picked up the length of straight grain Osage wood, the bow-stave unstrung and standing a good four feet long, and tucked it between his back and his ruck while hefting his broad leaf-bladed hunting spear in his right hand.

Once more checking his back trail Lee would depart his temporary camp site, scratching at the three day growth on his chin, and being the short trek towards the Citadel itself. How he was suppose to get inside was another matter in general, he still had the phone that his previous self had crafted for the sole purpose of contacting Mastema and his wife Nana, but it had been so long since he used any form of 'modern' technology he was loathed to utilize it now. Maybe he'd just go knock on the shield or something. Laughing at his twisted joke, Tegral having said the same thing just minutes before shelling the shield with heavy artillery, Lee disappeared into the low underbrush of the forest.

The trek across the war torn landscape surrounding the Citadel was mostly uneventful. Occasionally Lee would pause to kneel down beside the twisted wreckage of some metallic avatar of war. Not for any real reason, but because one his purely organic body required the occasional break and two it just seemed right to pay respect to the imprisoned human minds trapped under all that heavy weaponry who could no longer have the chance of living again because he had ordered them to their graves. And such a grave it was, something would eventually have to be done about this. Sighing Lee pat the hulking T-2 husk and bounded over it's outstretched, air cooled, fifty caliber machine gun arm, taking note of the five fallen, carbon copied, Citadel defenders that had surrounded it. Looked like victory had been there's, if for no other reason than sheer numbers. The T-2's armor had scorch marks where the laser weaponry employed by Mastema's personal little army had attempted to blast through the heavy plating of Tegral's war machines. Very few of those attacks had found purchase through the defenses, but those that did apparently were enough to drive the monstrous thing to the ground.

An errant thought made Lee smile. The T-2 was like the giant amongst the Lilliputians.

"Oi, Mastema. Open up." Lee would growl to himself, mostly. There was an off chance the master of the Citadel knew he was approaching, and thus he may be watching him right that moment. Knowing the Black Company as he did Lee rightfully assumed that Mastema had some form of telepathy in which to read his mind. If Mastema chose not to, or could not, interact with Lee's personal thoughts he would continue on towards where the edge of the barrier now stood. There was a slight difference in size compared to the last one, he noted, the ground in which had been overlapped did not have the same destroyed features as the rest of the Citadel's exterior kill zone. Regardless.

Using the tip of his spear Lee would tap the steel leaf blade against the shield in a test. He wasn't, after all, about to start knocking on something that could take his hand and arm off because he wasn't wary. Honestly he didn't expect this to work, he was doing it more as a sarcastic joke. Then again if it did work all the fricken better! If not he'd figure something out. He wasn't even sure if he had that phone on him.

Mastema really shouldn't be bothered with Lee. He really shouldn't; after all, what reason did he have to help the ex-war machine? More than that, he seemed in a human shell this time around. It would have been a simple matter to activate the kill zone now and erase the man from existence... no doubt some people thought that was exactly what he deserved. Lee seemed worried about injury by putting his spear against the shield, apparently not realizing that by being in the kill zone he was already in prime position to be vaped. If Mastema wanted him such, he'd have been dead a hundred paces back. The spear prodding the shield would pass right through it, more like it was going through a projection or hologram than a physical shield. Perhaps Tegral had stumbled on the way to defeat Mastema once and for all: hurl spears at the fish bowl.

"Done mourning the machines you needlessly sent to their destruction?" The deep, almost brooding voice spoke right into Lee's now biology based mind. Perhaps it wouldn't have worked in his cybernetic forms, but a living body was easy enough. Better yet, Lee received an appropriate response: an insulting greeting. That meant all was right with the world, at least. "You've been settled in outside Night's forest for some time now. What brings you here?"

Lee would probably not be as easily amused as Trilla. The girl didn't seem intent on snuggling up to him all day in any event. "Trilla, I need you to do me a favor..." If she was going to be restless, she may as well go do him a job, then she could do what she wanted. It was probably better she went her own way now. Mastema lifted her with both arms, setting her feet down on the ground in front of him, and then having her face him with both of his hands on her hips. "I need you to go and find your mother. Tell her we have something we need to take care of at the moment, and I think it's more likely I'll need her than not. Once you do that, you can do what you like. We can spend more time together later." Naturally, it wasn't exactly something Trilla was expected to refuse. With a light pat on her lower back Mastema would send his daughter on her way.

Favorite brother or not, Than wasn't one to understand very readily; after all, he wasn't the most involved brother around.... not anymore. "Ah, so Mom sent you out here after me, did she? Must be wondering what I do out here all the time. Well hopefully she doesn't want you back too soon; I'm not letting you go anywhere 'till you find us somewhere to eat this together." Leave it to Nana to have lunch sent out to him. Even if the lunch was only meant for him, Eecheb wasn't really someone who hated food anyway. Then again, perhaps Nana was more devious than given credit for and had intended just this outcome. Perhaps he would get smaller portions or worser food once everyone knew the robot standing next to him.