Oh, yes: Harpuia can choose the good of the majority over the minority (since he's aware that sometimes, no matter what, people are going to get hurt, it would be stupid to put a version of the law in that wouldn't consider that), which is why he doesn't have a problem with Ciel being executed in the first chapter: confirmation that the rule of law extends to humans equally would make the human population safer, and if what she did had been revealed, people would have tried to kill her anyway, for various reasons including blasphemy. What she did was a direct threat to humanity's survival, since if she'd destabilized Neo Arcadia/canon had happened?

As it turned out, Leviathan didn't need to make herself a door: someone else already had.

The edges were growing inwards even as she watched, even if pretty slowly. So this station had nanite self-repair capability? This was just too slow, though. It must rely on drones (robots or mechanaloids?) to do serious repair work (as opposed to fixing dents) and move materials into place.

The flying panels explained why no drones had been sent out. This was some serious renovation work going on. Leviathan focused on her internal com, still surprised that it was actually working. Yes, leaving the communications channel open would let the station's admin monitor communications (encryptions? Robot masters treated encryptions like crossword puzzles), but there was such a thing as code words, and the ability to get situation reports and coordinate her troops? Of course, there was no substitute for the judgment of the units in the field, for soldiers who knew what they were doing. Even Harpuia knew that too much oversight would strangle initiative, that there was no substitute for firsthand information, for actually being there.

She still wouldn't have used that com to tell those two to, "Come over here," if it weren't for the fact that only an idiot would design a space station that didn't monitor itself. A space station that didn't monitor itself couldn't repair itself, couldn't tell when it took damage and fix it. Especially if this station had been built by Dr. Wily, it already knew they were here. The question was if whoever else was here knew that. Of course, it was possible that no one was here, that the lights were on and no one was home. They'd assumed the teleports were triggered by Weil, because the smart money was generally on Murphey, but what if Zero had recovered some ancient memory files and used this place to get the four of them away from those snakes?

Lieutenant Commander Elpis pointed at the hole, after using her beam saber to anchor herself to the station. They were getting in that way?

Leviathan nodded, but looked past her: they were going to wait for Craft. She knew humans did it all the time, but naming people after other people? Just seemed confusing. She could have called this one Elpis Jr., except they weren't related and Junior was used for boys. Elpis II? Or she could call Aurora Elpis just Aurora and this one Elpis, but it was Aurora's name first.

Well, Elpis for now. If she needed to give orders in a hurry, titles were unwieldy. That was part of why the Maverick Hunters had called practically everyone either 'Commander' or 'Lieutenant' in the field, even though there was a large variety of Commanders, from Supreme Commander Signas & the two most senior commanders to some poor sap who had just been built and assigned to command, which was essentially staking them out for the virus since mavericks made an effort to target officers.

When Craft arrived, Leviathan and Elpis were having the exact opposite of the kind of nonverbal exchange that ended up with humans getting temporarily stuck in halls, when two going in opposite directions ended up in front of each other. 'I'll get out of your way.' 'No, I'll get out of your way.' 'No, really, I'll get out of yours,' that ended up taking longer the more of a hurry they were in and the more they wanted to just cut the conversation short/avoid having a little status battle by just yielding and getting out of the way quickly. And obviously no one wanted to back up, since that was ridiculous. And then they'd both twitch, starting to move to the side and then aborting it when the other persons started to move to the side at the same time. Most humans in Neo Arcadia looked down at their feet when they walked, Craft had noticed, and not just to avoid tripping over things. Those exchanges always took a lot longer when the two humans made eye contact, because then they had even more data to go on when trying to analyze each other, and there would be eye-twitches and all sorts of arcane things that would make the reploids stop and gawk.

Reploids were just told that when this happened, they should always move to their own right. A simple, low-tech solution.

Still, in this case what they were arguing about was, 'No, it's dangerous: I should go in first.' General Leviathan thought this because she was a Guardian, obviously, and probably knew a few hundred times more about this kind of boarding action than they did. Lt. Commander Elpis was insisting because General Leviathan was a Guardian, and thus not expendable. I.D. spikes and other booby traps could happen to anyone.

If they'd been on earth and Neige had been here with that bag of hers, he would have suggested they borrow Neige's antique zenny coin and flip it. Sometimes it was humans who had the simple, low-tech ideas. The longer they just stood here, the longer whoever was running this place would have to get their guys in position. Flipping a coin in space probably wouldn't work anyway.

Still, there was an obvious solution: edge up, nice and easy, just looking like he was waiting for them like a good new recruit, and then grab the rim of the hole and pull/push on that to flip himself in.

The two of them quickly followed him, and the Rekku officer opened her mouth, probably to ask him what the hell he was thinking. Except no air, so Craft just grinned.

And then stopped grinning, fast, when General Leviathan grabbed the front of his jacket armor and pulled him until his eyes were just a couple inches from hers. Ice-blue, and apparently being a Guardian gave you the ability to speak into people's heads without a com, because she was just looking at him, and it was like he could hear her thoughts as his legs dangled helplessly in midair, the Guardian's firmly attached to what might be the floor.

'That was cute. Real cute. You have some balls, newbuilt. And that's the only reason I'm not running you through and leaving you here. This is not playtime and if I think you're going to keep doing stunts like that and will get yourself killed, I will shoot you myself." Better than getting caught by Weil, after all. 'I am goddamn General Leviathan and you haven't even been through bootcamp, which makes you lower than the scrap metal my sergeants scrape off their dash boots, got me? You were damn well aware that two superior officers weren't sure who should go in first yet, and you damn well knew we wouldn't have picked you. I will not tolerate insubordination, got that, punk?'

It was when he looked apologetic and lowered his eyes ('Yes, ma'am, I'll be good.') that she loosened her grip.

She still didn't let him go, though. "Be careful as you go through each of those," she told them through her com, hauling Craft though a round opening that looked like it could close, sealing air in. "We might reach a section with artificial gravity before we reach a section with air."

It wasn't long before they found an airlock. With a panel next to it that had been opened. Since Leviathan seriously doubted that the maintenance crew here had just left wires hanging out in vacuum, this was evidence that whoever had carved that hole in wasn't whoever was running this place. Holes would repair themselves, but damaging the security system of somewhere you planned to use as a base through failing to clean up after yourself was just too stupid. "Cover me," she told the other two, planting her feet and one arm to brace herself so that she could examine the panel. It was easy to figure out what they'd done to open it, even without hooking into the system. She opened one side of the airlock, caught Elpis' gaze and pointed her at it. The airlock was thin, only the width of the station's standard panels. Craft would have had trouble if he was any stouter. A hollow panel, where the walls on each side could iris open and shut: clever, since they'd serve to rapidly seal off areas. And a cargo airlock could be made by putting a section of hall in between two of them, and flooding that with air. The station probably had panels like this that were solid, with just one thick iris-door, as blast walls. Clever, since this place was modular and was designed to reassemble itself into different shapes like that.

Like the building block toys X had hoped at least one of them might be interested in.

She nodded, since sending, 'Yes sir' would have been unnecessary radio chatter, and went through.

Alright, close the near side behind her, open the far side for her to go through by closing the other circuit… And this was probably as good a place to dip her toes into this station's systems as any, Leviathan decided. It was already damaged, after all.

The security cameras were almost ridiculously easy to access: she was bombarded with alerts as soon as she was plugged in.

There was a Lightbot on the station! And the sysadmin wasn't responding!

Of course, Copy-X was only a Lightbot by adoption, and the system had just given itself over to an actual Lightbot, but Leviathan had no intention of letting it figure that out.

Let's see: the kid was there, with Ciel and a few cyber-elves. Weil was at the core with a dead reploid. There were a few other reploids about. Which were the people who had carved that hole in the station?

Ah, Lark, and…

If Leviathan had just been a reploid, if she'd just been watching security camera footage instead of tapping into the system's assessments and data overlays, she would have picked up her spear and vowed to kill Weil. Next.

Instead, she came very close to squeeing.

"General Leviathan?" Elpis asked, once the airlock finally closed between the two of them and the air stopped whooshing out. She'd thought they were trying to be quiet, or as quiet as reploids could be in metal corridors? Opening this area to space to fling herself and Private Craft through?

"Follow me!" General Leviathan called, sprinting ahead of the two of them. "And don't shoot: friendlies!"

The two of them followed her, tracking her by the clangs of her footsteps. She was already out of sight, and from ahead of them they heard a soft cry of surprise and a crash.

Elpis skidded to a halt and just stared.

The Four Guardians were the defenders of Neo Arcadia, second to Master X himself. His children, shining beacons of the heights that the reploid race could aspire to. Their wisdom, their heroism, their grace and beauty…

Even if General Harpuia did have a stick up his ass, he'd had a point. She couldn't just half-ass things, decide that something sounded cool without actually being willing to work to understand it.

Elpis winced, wishing she hadn't thought of the word ass. Originally, like most reploids, she hadn't paid a lot of attention to the relative aesthetic qualities of human-style proportions, but she'd had to do a lot of research because remodels were incredibly expensive, even for officers.

The crash had been General Leviathan jumping on top of another female model reploid. A very curvy one. Elpis wondered how she'd managed to find colors of pink and green that didn't clash. Maybe the black under armor helped? And where had she gotten that hair? Elpis wished hers would roll up like that when she wanted it out of the way, it must be so convenient.

"Uncle Axl! I missed you!"

Wait. Uncle?

Yes, that was definitely a female model. What were those chest compartments made out of, anyway? Were they even compartments? They looked, well, squishy. Elpis could see that one was somewhat compressed by Leviathan's arms: that hug looked tight.

"Phantom's going to be so happy, I don't believe it! Oh, right, Weil was there, so you woke up to kick his ass, right?" Leviathan said happily, not pausing for breath at all.

Lark gasped. "Snow Fairy? What are you doing here?"

Snow Fairy? Elpis and Craft wondered.

Leviathan was also surprised, looking up at her, then back down at 'Axl.' "You told her my nickname? I mean, she looks like Aunt Cinnamon, but…"

"And I thought you were going to shoot me when I saw you." 'Axl' sounded surprised.

"The system here noted your registry, so when I tapped into it…" She'd seen it.

DWN Infinity-1: Axl

Uncle Axl.

Not that she would say that in front of three people who didn't know about the whole long story. Not that Leviathan knew the long story. She hadn't even known the newgens had been invented by Wily's ghost until Phantom had told her, trying to explain why he thought he actually had a chance at taking Omega and why she should help him with what had seemed like an insane plan (and not the fun kind of insane) until he filled her in.

"Axl isn't awake," Lark said sadly. "We tried to wake him up, even… Another elf couldn't wake him up, either."

Alright, now Leviathan grabbed her spear and quickly flipped her grip on it, holding it near the tip and the tip to the throat of the female model under her. "Then who are you and why are you wearing Marino's form?" She didn't have to ask how they'd taken Marino's form: it was a very nice form, so it was pretty obvious why Axl had his wife's configuration stored in his systems. She was sure Cinnamon's was in there too.

She'd assumed Axl had taken that form so Marino would… be there, in some way, when he attacked Weil. When he took vengeance for her.

So Weil would know why he was being repeatedly shot to pieces.

"I thought you liked ghost stories," her prisoner quipped, more fond than afraid. Glad to see her, too?

"Vengeance from beyond the grave is a nice idea." But reality was a bitch. "If you can't give me one reason to believe you're the real Marino," Leviathan started to say, and found herself remembering the day Copy-X had been dropped into their laps.

"How about this?" she said, holding something up to Leviathan, clasped between her thumb and forefinger. "I would have gone for your wallet, but you redesigned your armor: there's no space free for conventional pockets," and she was good at spotting such things, "but this looked important."

Leviathan stared at her ID card. It wasn't a credit card. X had told them to let people use energy crystals in place of zenny, when the practice started up, because having something besides rations, seeing immediate results of their labor in their own lives instead of just toiling for the good of the city would give people who were tired, and had little faith in the stability of governments and their ability to protect them, something to labor for.

The Guardians didn't draw salaries. The Guardians didn't have their energy expenditures tracked, although Harpuia tracked his own and even penalized himself for overdrafts because the idea of 'special privileges' or 'more equal than others' was not something he'd tolerate in himself. Especially because Neo Arcadia technically was a totalitarian dictatorship, and if the Guardians started thinking that kind of thing was okay, then their immediate underlings might start trying to take advantage of their own positions to get goodies for themselves and their friends and families (if they were human and had families) and then they'd have had riots on their hands, especially in the early days.

About a third the job of the Zan'ei's Investigations Unit was watching for abuses of power, hoarding and officials taking bribes. Phantom tended to let Harpuia handle the arrest of high-profile cases, because it there was one thing good Harpuia was good at, it was coming down on people like the wrath of fucking God.

So, unlike most people, Leviathan's ID card was not something of a credit card.

It was a carte blanche.

Master X and the other Guardians were the only people who could overrule any decision she made. If Leviathan gave someone that card, it would mean that she was deputizing them to act in her name. No one would counterfeit it, and everyone would assume no one would steal it: who would be that stupid, when Leviathan's name carried such weight?

Slide that into a terminal, and she could order a populated building to self-destruct. She could order mechanaloids to invade the granaries and carry off their foodstock.

Someone with that card could do an incredible amount of damage, if they weren't stopped in time.

She really shouldn't have brought it with her. Especially right now, when X was AWOL, Copy-X was here, Phantom was in Omega, Fefnir was fighting Omega & Harpuia was in the stratosphere. No one with the authority was in a position to show up in person to contradict 'her' orders.

And someone had just removed it from...

"Don't worry, I didn't cut through any of your hair," not-Axl reassured her as Leviathan's hand reached up behind her head. "I have to get stuff out of mine all the time."

Only someone who knew Marino would use pickpocketing as a means of identification. Only someone who didn't know Neo Arcadian law or construction would have gone for her hair instead of looking for a body slot or giving up after checking out her armor. The thing was, it wasn't Marino that had told Leviathan that trick, but Phantom. He'd said that Marino had taught it to him, though, since most people would assume a reploid's hair was solid if it felt solid, but if it was made up of strands that could be bent to hold things in place, it made an excellent place to hide small valuables and equipment.

But the real Marino wouldn't know that Phantom had told her this. This would be a show of skill, like her wallet, that time…

And she was just holding up the card, like she didn't have any idea what it was, but it was what she had found.

Leviathan took it with her left hand, snapped it in two with a twitch of her thumb, and then flung her arms around her again. (Her right was still holding the spear, but with the head angled so no one got stabbed.)

She had no idea how this worked (might be Zero's doing, since the virus could bring people back, could even be Axl's since it was his body), but it was awesome.

A certain aspect of Marino's character design... Well, it's Capcom. Why let the fact that they're robots get in the way of fanservice? Of course, I wouldn't put it past Marino to have those just for the sake of the WTF factor. Still, while some humans would be staring at her chest due to sexual attraction, most reploids would be staring in bewilderment. Which means they aren't paying attention to the master thief's hands, which would be a rather expensive mistake...

If you don't mind a bit of the muses babbling, with possible TMI:

Axlmuse seems to find the bouncing head-tiltingly kinky. He has just blushed and said that Zeromuse has no right to comment, while inwardly wondering for a moment if there's anything X likes and then stopping that thought because the idea of X having sex is, well, like thinking of parents having sex (father of the reploid race, even if Axl isn't a reploid, after all).

Xmuse has coughed and implied that Leviathan came by her thing for long hair honestly, although aside from that he doesn't know if he has a 'type' because he didn't really get much chance to date, between everyone dying and professional relationships. Also the feeling that a relationship with any reploid would be wrong, due to responsibility to his children (they exist because of him), on top of the age and power differential. That basically left humans and Zero, and it would be very easy for X to kill a human if he, ahem, wasn't paying attention for some reason like, oh, a sensory overload...

And now Xmuse is wondering about the fact that while he prefers humanoid reploids, he's honestly never been attracted to a human in that way. Never really occurred to him. Zeromuse's opinion is that of course it didn't, X never thought about that in general. Xmuse thinks it's the power differential: he'd want a partner, someone who would have his back, not someone he'd be expected to protect. He has too many dependants as it is. Of course, when one is centuries-old Lost Technology that has already developed reality warping abilities and will just keep growing stronger, evolving into something greater, equals are thin on the ground.