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 Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2025 12:42 pm
Kerberos wasn't expecting much out of visiting his world, at least in terms of materials. He wasn't sure if any of what they used would be salvageable, or if it would be anything Daedalus was familiar with, or...
Well, in truth, he didn't really know anything about this stuff, so all he could do was guess and hope. and at least he had a second pair of eyes on all of it. Plus, Fang's company was pleasant and welcome.
As promised, when they'd finished on Fang's world, Kerberos brought them to his own, stiller and quieter than he was used to.
"Usually there's all kinds of animals," he said, "but they don't like the storms, so they've mostly been indoors. Which, I guess, means we might see some," he continued, leading Fang to a specific building not far from the main temple. He trailed his fingers over the door, beautiful and brass, with a stained glass window in the center, and then pushed it open, revealing an old shop. There were indeed some scurrying noises inside, and a few moving lights--some of the little bioluminescent bunnies, huddled inside under a table.
"I think this used to be some kind of blacksmith, or repair shop, or similar," he said, gesturing--there were various pieces laid out on tables, most of them half-taken apart already; elegant designs in white and gold, soft curves and corners fashioned into flowers, things that hardly looked mechanical for their elegance.
"We can take these the rest of the way apart and get at the guts, and bring them back for Daedalus."
At least, that was what Kerberos hoped. They all needed this, these satellites, this plan. It had to work. There was no other choice.
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Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2025 12:55 pm
Fang liked the quiet of Kerberos's world. It seemed... soft, and delicate. He liked that a lot. Even with the storms causing the animals to hide, which made him sad. It seemed like a place he would have liked to come, if he hadn't been displace by time and Chaos at such a young age. Everything looked so pretty and seamless. He zeroed in on the rabbits almost immediately, the way their bioluminescent fur moved around catching his eye and forcing his attention on them. They looked... He inhaled slowly. Not rabbits for hunting, he told himself firmly. These ones for petting. It was a little difficult to curb that instinct, even with the idea of "hunting" rabbits and "petting" rabbits that had been introduced to him on Earth. But he managed, because he loved touching soft things, and rabbits, as a rule, were usually pretty soft. Scaring away these precious bunnies wouldn't win him any points with Kerberos, either. Technically, they were an endangered species. They belonged to a planet still slowly waking up to having life again, and also, definitely not his own planet. He doubted he'd even hunt the rabbits on his own planet once they came back, too enamored with how precious life was to have again. "Fang find bugs, on his planet," he commented as he finally tore his gaze from the rabbits. They were probably too scared of the storms to allow anyone that looked like a predator near them, anyway. He surveyed the bits, bobs, and pieces of technological stuff strewn all over the benches with a critical eye, trying to determine what would be good to harvest from the hunks of metal and what would be discarded, unusable for their friend Daedalus and the satellites. So much of it just looked like stuff that you added to make something pretty, like phone cases with pictures of little puppies in a field of flowers on them, or fences that had tall, twisty metal poles to make it look scarier. "Fang will do his best," he assured Kerberos, sitting down at the bench in a spot where there wasn't much to take apart. He didn't want to start off overwhelmed with a huge pile or anything.
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Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2025 1:07 pm
"I had bugs first, too," Kerberos said, and he smiled to think of it. "Have you heard the story, of how things kicked bakc off? How our worlds started having life again?"
If not, he would be glad to tell it. To recount the joy of cricket song, so soon after that awful battle that had felt so devastating at the time. His fingers ran over the burn scar on his arm, briefly--truly, he and every single one of them owed a debt to Lyndin they would never be able to repay, even given all the time in the world.
But once Earth was safe, Kerberos resolved, he would find his friend again and ask him what might begin to be done for Velencya. Lyndin had brought life to all their worlds, and was now working to help them save Earth. Even if he'd sworn Kerberos to secrecy, a covenant he was bound to keep, Kerberos knew what debt was present.
He sat down at a different table, reaching into the guts of the object before him--he wasn't sure what it was, but it looked like a cracked open sphere with wires inside, and he could at least determine which wires looked good and which were too damaged to be reused. That would be something, and the metals within were useful regardless. He'd bring Daedauls the shell, too, just in case that had useable material.
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Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2025 1:14 pm
There was a story? Life hadn't just... started coming back as a result of the senshi for them finally being reborn? "Fang not hear," he said eagerly, leaning in towards Kerberos for a brief moment. He pulled back a second later as he remembered he was supposed to be working on disassembling the strange technological bits and bobs in front of him, not just listening to Kerberos tell a story. He did, however, turn one of his ears in Kerberos's direction so he could hear better as he carefully took a tiny screwdriver to an even tinier screw, then scowled at it and reached for the even smaller screwdriver so it would actually match. He wanted to hear the story and do a good job at the same time. Earth depended on this. He could do it. He had to.
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Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2025 1:19 pm
Kerberos leaned forward, eager to tell one of his favorite stories. One of the ones in this war that had a happy ending.
"When I first purified," Kerberos said, "I came to my planet all the time. The first time I came, everything was withered and dead--but the more I came back, the more it restored. Eventually, I gave it enough that it gave me this," he gestured to the glowing marks on his arm, "but even then, while all of the plants were flourishing and the buildings were even rebuilding some, there were no animals.
"Around Halloween, a few years ago, there was a battle on a hill. It was terrible, and we took awful losses, I won't lie to you. People were corrupted. A few were killed. but during that battle, the comet Archideus was blown up, and a pulse of energy went into the universe..."
He would elide Lyndin's direct involvement, as promised. but the tale of returning to his world to find cricket song? Of breaking down crying in the garden because everything was alive/?
That, he wouldn't gloss over at all.
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