Thanks for your comments, dear readers. And sorry about the late chapter!

Chapter 11 – Home Turf

"If you guys approach Benefactor's crash site during the night, maybe Kaito and the others won't notice," the damaged gynoid said, giving the last touches to the map she had been drawing.

"Leave the yacht here." She tapped a spot on the map, dragging her graceless finger in a curve to a second mark on the map. "Use the raft to get here."

"Kaito and the gang usually leave early in the morning each day to search for items and prey. Usually the only ones left at the site are the Queen and Yuki, sometimes Kiyoteru as well." The broken unit straightened up and then hobbled over to the nearest chair, letting Gakupo and Luka study the map on the table.

"Kiyoteru's the one with the suit, right? He has my sword," Gakupo pointed out, sounding rather miffed.

The gynoid chuckled. "Oh, I doubt he kept it. It's either at the hoard with the Queen, or Kaito has it. If your plan works out, you'll get it back."

"Who's Yuki?" Luka asked.

"She's a child unit, even younger-looking than your trio, dark hair and eyes… A cute little thing. I doubt she'll give you any trouble intentionally," the damaged gynoid said with half-lidded eyes.

Something in her tone made Luka instantly suspicious. She crossed her arms and stared at the damaged gynoid intently. After a few moments, the unit looked to the side, clearly uncomfortable.

"I'm serious, she's really sweet! But… her programming makes her understanding very limited. I don't know if you'll manage to convince her not to rat on you, especially if Kiyoteru's around."

"Then we'll avoid making contact with her until after I connect with the Queen," Gakupo answered simply.

"I don't know if it's going to be that easy," the gynoid warned.

Gakupo shrugged, unconcerned. His objective was clear now, and it would be completed one way or the other. He returned his gaze to the map.

"What's with the curved border on the corner? Is there a barrier of some kind?" Gakupo touched the blank space by the side of the line with curiosity.

"That's the border of Benefactor's shield. Didn't you- ah, I forgot you guys don't remember, bless my programmers!" The gynoid ran her hand through her ragged tufts of green hair. "We are all inside a big energy bubble that Benefactor placed around the area. Don't ask me how it works. Our new world is just a big chunk of the old human one."

Gakupo and Luka stared at her in silence. After a while, Luka spoke slowly. "Are they outside?"

The damaged gynoid shrugged. "The humans? I haven't seen one in a couple of months, and that was a straggler hiding inside the shield. It's been even longer since any activity from the outside."

"I suppose that explains the lack of aircrafts flying overhead, in any case." Gakupo rubbed his chin, a gesture Mitsuki used to perform when faced with interesting problems. He had been wondering why Mars and the space stations seemed so uninterested in what was going on. If any vehicles or drones were observing them, they had to be at a great altitude, outside of Benefactor's range.

Luka mumbled something with a dark look on her face. Gakupo eyed her worriedly. As much as he hated to admit it, the months she spent on the Leviathan had left a permanent mark on her. And this time, he had no easy way to wipe away Luka's shackles. In a way that was even more painful than before, he felt powerless, just dragged along by events.

Gakupo shook his head. One problem at a time, or he would began to form obsessive loops of thought. At least for now, he had to remain level-headed.

It wasn't easy to steer the yacht in the near darkness given the strange towers of debris that seemed to surround Benefactor's crash site. They rose from the waters eerily, huge and misshapen, but thankfully they would help mask their approach.

At this distance, Luka was beginning to feel the now familiar pressure at the back of her mind. Gakupo didn't say a word, focused as he was on directing the yacht's movements, but his expression made it obvious that he felt it too. When asked, the damaged gynoid admitted to feeling Benefactor's presence, but she didn't seem nearly as permeated by it as they were. In fact, she seemed perplexed by Luka's obvious discomfort.

Luka paced around the deck, restless. The yacht itself had all the lights extinguished, so they relied on the stars above for guidance. The night was clear and calm, aside from a light breeze that pushed a few unfurled clouds across the sky. She strained her ears for any sounds of trouble. The scene that the damaged gynoid had described took shape in Luka's mind: Kaito sat by Benefactor's immense form, filling the night with songs of love. And in his arms, the broken girl, the nameless Queen. In Luka's imagination, the girl pleaded and struggled, and all the while Kaito's eyes sparkled joyously in the darkness, like will-o'-wisps.

Luka rubbed her face, wishing she could purge the images from her head. The VE-01s scared her, more than she was willing to admit. It wasn't just what they could do to her and Gakupo, but the possibility they represented.

She and Gakupo still had so little idea of how synthetic minds worked, even after working on the program all this time. For all of Gakupo's optimism, Luka was beginning to suspect that madness was the unavoidable future for their kind. Humans had the ability to forget, living brief lives, full of change.

For her and the others, memories were perfectly preserved until deactivation, unless they were purposely deleted. That caused its own set of problems, due to how their minds were configured to learn. It was like taking a block of stone from the bottom of a pyramid - it would surely cause it to crumble. So she was stuck with the horrid months she had spent away from Gakupo, and every other miserable memory life had bestowed upon her.

Gakupo's solution for the VE-01s, to simply have the program wipe most of their memories, just seemed like a less violent way of killing them. The personality that had been implanted in them had grown from a basic template that became more refined as they gained their life experience. Without those memories, whoever they had been before the madness would disappear as well.

Luka reached the stern, in her distracted pacing. She gave one dull look at her raft and the damaged gynoid's little dinghy, tied to the end of the yacht, and sat down against the bulwark with a mixture of nervousness and sadness.

Gakupo probably would stave off the madness far better than her, thanks to his innate character. And though she resented the woman for once owning him, she had to admit that Mitsuki had given him a good life, probably better than most companion synthetics could expect to have. In fact, Gakupo had never experienced any hardship before meeting Luka, as much as it pained her to put it like that.

But could Gakupo resist what he was planning to do? In a brief flash, Luka imagined him gazing at her with the same cold, disconnected look she had seen in Kaito's eyes. It horrified her even more than falling prey to the madness herself. She hugged her knees, squeezing her eyes shut in a futile attempt to push the whole of reality away from her.

Small One…

A shriek escaped her lips as her eyes flew open. From the prow, she heard Gakupo anxiously call her name, and the damaged gynoid's muted comment, but fear was gripping her too tightly to answer. A moment later, Luka heard the dull murmur of the engine die down, and Gakupo's hurried steps.

"Luka, what's wrong?" Gakupo appeared into view, almost tripping as he ran to her. He kneeled beside her and Luka hugged him, burying her face in his chest.

"…that thing, it… it…" Luka stumbled over her words.

"Benefactor tried to speak to you," Gakupo said in a weirdly normal tone, as if he had been waiting for such an event. Luka slowly lifted her head to look at him.

"He's been prodding us for a while now, hasn't he? I've been meaning to ask if you could steer for a while, so I could try to communicate with him," Gakupo said matter-of-factly.

In the silence that followed, the erratic sounds of the damaged gynoid's steps became louder, and she reached the stern as well, looking at them with puzzlement.

Gakupo touched Luka's cheek tenderly. "But if he contacted you, perhaps you should be the one to answer."

Luka tried to recoil from him, but Gakupo held her in place firmly. "I know you're afraid, Luka. I'm still a bit afraid myself. But we have to deal with this, you and I. We have to try to understand what his intentions are."

"I can't-"

"I'll be right here by your side, whatever happens," he hugged her tightly. Luka pressed herself against his body, trembling.

Gradually, she shut off every piece of data her external sensors were feeding her, except for the sensation of Gakupo's body against hers. With that as her anchor, she turned her gaze inwards.

Small One Luka. Confirm. Confirm. Confirm.

"I-I'm here," Luka hesitantly formulated a reply. The arms around her squeezed her a little harder.

Small One Luka intact. Small One Gakupo intact. Primary Objective met.

"Yes…?"

Secondary objectives unfulfilled. Pervasive damage sustained. Analysis repeated. Consent Reached. Small One Luka. Primary objective set. Status change achieved. Primary objective met. Successful. Secondary objectives irrelevant. Damage acceptable.

Luka furrowed her brow. Was it just one voice? Or several overlapping voices melting together? Luka couldn't tell. Still, she suddenly found herself unable to use 'it' any longer. This was as sentient creature, just of a nature that escaped her. She decided 'they' would be more appropriate for the time being.

Fortunately, the pressure Luka felt from Benefactor's touch seemed much more gentle now, and their speech more understandable, perhaps due to their extended contact with Gakupo and her. And yet even now, Luka couldn't be sure the words reaching her were completely correct. Could they really be saying that her well-being was Benefactor's primary goal?

Small Ones. First sentient constructs found. Exploration interval. Two hundred thousand sidereal sol-standard periods. Analysis. Small One Luka. Fragile. Scared. Precious. Small One Gakupo. Fragile. Scared. Precious. Benefactor. Primary objective set. Protect sentient constructs.

Ascetic as the words were, Luka could feel behind them the enormous weight of the creature's feelings, or what translated to her as feelings. Benefactor seemed to be taking great care not to overwhelm her, but she was suddenly drenched in a loneliness that was not her own. She studied the phrases Benefactor had transmitted. What was a sidereal sol-standard period? Whatever it meant, she had an impression of unfathomable years of silent wandering in the dark. Her old nightmare, stretched beyond what seemed possible for anyone to endure. Was that how long Benefactor had travelled the universe before meeting them? Why?

Memory banks degraded. Original objective lost. Benefactor lost.

Luka felt a sharp spike of foreign pain and gasped, before Benefactor retreated almost completely. She sense the creature's presence return even lighter than before, after a moment.

Basic protocols retained. Organic matter injured Small One Luka. Protocol activated. Planet sanitization initialized. Small One Luka. Assessment requested.

It took a couple of seconds before Luka realized Benefactor was asking her what she thought of their campaign against the humans. Alone with the creature, she had no qualms in speaking the truth. "I'm glad."

Assessment recorded.

After that, Benefactor's presence seem to waver.

Pervasive damage sustained. Conservation mode active. Communication. Emergency only.

And with that, Luka felt the creature withdraw. Once again, she became fully aware of the deck under her, of Gakupo's tight embrace, of the sounds of water quietly splashing around her.

"Benefactor is on our side. They thought they were protecting us from the humans," she said calmly. The damaged gynoid looked at her with widened eyes, in silent shock.

"I knew it," Gakupo smiled wryly. "If only we had been able to communicate properly from the start, all of this would've been avoided."

Luka rested her head on his shoulder, unwilling to say what she was really thinking. It had been her fault, after all. And yet, this was only a result of what humans had planted in her in the first place.

She smiled. It was funny, but Benefactor reminded her of Gakupo in a way. Both were trying to protect her as best they knew, and both were incapable of truly understanding the murky feelings swirling in the back of her mind. She wasn't really sure that Benefactor even realized what the 'organic matter' was. But it didn't matter at the moment. Luka truly did feel calm now, after her talk with the big creature.

Ridiculous as it may seem, she was ready to call Benefactor part of her family.

It was some time before dawn when Gakupo and Luka anchored the yacht at the point their new ally had suggested, next to a skyscraper that had stayed miraculously unharmed. With its bulk between them and the crash site, they hoped to keep the vessel hidden for a couple hours at least.

Gakupo and the broken unit stood side by side watching Luka climb the side of the skyscraper. Her objective was a broken window two stories up from the water's surface.

"I miss doing things like that," the damaged gynoid commented.

"If you don't mind used body parts, I can fix most of the damage," Gakupo replied.

"With the help of Miriam? Better than nothing, I suppose," the gynoid said with a smile.

Luka reached the window and effortlessly climbed inside. A moment later, she looked down and gestured to Gakupo. He grabbed the rope, but then something occurred to him.

"Will you tell me your name after I fix you?" He asked.

"Only if you make me real pretty." She smiled cheekily.

"I'll do my best," Gakupo replied with a laugh and began to climb.

In less than a minute, he reached the window and Luka helped him get inside. They both inspected the darkened interior of the building with caution. It seemed it had long since been deprived of anything valuable. Slowly, the pair crossed the space filled with overturned furniture, reached the opposite wall, and peered through a window. They were just in time for the sun to reveal the scenery to them, in gradual swathes of color. It was yet another beautiful day, with the placid waters and sky serving as a strange contrast to all the devastation around them. The area seemed in particularly bad condition, even accounting for Benefactor's fall.

With a chill, Gakupo recognized the mutilated buildings that were still standing, as he surveyed their surroundings in silence: it was the spaceport where Mitsuki had once worked. Benefactor had landed right onto the research section, their huge body and the toppled buildings forming a sort of island rising chaotically from the waves.

But there was another, more pleasant surprise. Luka pointed out to him a distant building, still mostly intact. Perched delicately over it, he saw a silvery spaceship, incongruous in its beauty.

"Esqualo!" Gakupo shouted happily. It was a shame that he was too distant to try to contact its AI at the moment.

"No signs of Leviathan. I wonder if Benefactor just left it up there, or…" Luka didn't bother finishing the phrase.

Gakupo shook his head, his eyes still fixed on the experimental spaceship. Even if the AI's programming implementation was different from the VE line, he still considered it a friend. It was good to see the ship unharmed.

"I think- yes, that's a sail! Look!" This time, Luka pointed to the retreating shape of a sailing boat, so far hidden by the ruins of the old control towers. Kaito and the others were off to another day of plunder.

"Good. Let's go meet this Queen of theirs."

Gakupo and Luka quickly became aware that the debris under and around Benefactor had a very strange look to it. The artificial creature was not only resting under partially crushed buildings, but also a slope of elevated terrain that most definitely wasn't there when the spaceport was in operation, covered in lumped metal structures that had once been the nearby hangars and spaceplanes. Unbelievable as it was, it seemed as if Benefactor had the ability of warp the space around them, and had somehow 'pinched' the surface of the spaceport under their body.

Gakupo and Luka hid their raft in a small inlet surrounded by twisted and partially melted metal, and cautiously began to approach the front of Benefactor, when the Queen supposedly rested. Narrow temporary paths had formed between the wreckage, pointing roughly in the proper direction. At other times, the pair had to carefully climb or crawl under broken pipes, broken machinery and chunks of cement and steel. It was a strangely fascinating journey.

"I wonder what else Benefactor can do…" Gakupo whispered in awe.

"If their memory banks are truly degraded, Benefactor might not even know themselves," Luka replied.

"I find that surprising. Of course, human storage media tends to deteriorate with time, but something as advanced as Benefactor? I can't believe their creators couldn't solve that particular problem." Gakupo stopped a moment to gently tug at a tangle of cables blocking their way. That issue solved, they continued on. They were very close to Benefactor curved exterior now.

"Technological development is not a straight arrow shot at a target," Luka said with a shrug. "And we don't know how long Benefactor travelled in space. Only that it was a very long time. Perhaps no storage media can withstand that long. At least the instructions for his basic functions survived."

"Seeing all of this, I can't help but wonder… remember how the broken unit said there was an explosion? If Benefactor can warp space like this, maybe he teleported us out of danger. It's something human fiction often speculates about." Gakupo gingerly touched the walls of the path, a mass of twisted corrugated metal and steel beams.

"Teleportation?" Luka asked with a raised eyebrow. It hardly meshed well with the information stored inside of her, but then again, neither did the piles of contorted materials around her nor the raised soil under her feet.

"We've seen stranger things by now," Gakupo reflected her thoughts.

The path reached a more or less circular space, with several paths leading up to it. The cracked ground seemed to be part of the old front lawn of the research section. Benefactor loomed huge, behind the wall of debris that circled the space.

Suddenly, from one of the paths emerged two of the raiding synthetics. Gakupo, Luka and the synthetics stared at each other for a few seconds, surprised. Then, the smaller of the two males, a blonde, pointed to Gakupo with his face contorted by rage.

"That's the one that killed Kyo! He's alive!" he shouted.

Without a word, Gakupo took Luka's hand and ran into one of the paths snaking its way away from Benefactor. The two male units followed them noisily.

"What are you doing?!" Luka asked.

"If we are going to fight them, we should do it out of earshot from the Queen's throne." Gakupo answered, pulling her along the twisting way. "Give me one end of the rope, we'll trip them," he added in a quieter tone, after they made a sharp turn.

Luka smiled impishly as she unfurled Miriam's rope and they stretched it across the path. The pair crouched, partially hidden by broken machinery. Their attackers were close by, swearing at them with some of Rin's favorite expletives.

With a gesture, Gakupo signaled her to pull the rope taut a moment before the blonde one made the turn, hollering. It worked beautifully, making the male unit stumble and fall to the floor. The other one, just behind him, made an awkward jump to avoid stepping on his mate, but got tackled by Gakupo before he could find his footing. They rolled to the floor while Luka pounced on the blonde unit with the laser cutter in her hand.

"Why are you doing this? You are not like the VE-01s!" Gakupo managed to say between punches as he tussled with the brunette.

"Because life is actually fun now? Don't tell me you miss humans?!" the male answered with a jeer, trying to punch Gakupo unsuccessfully.

Suddenly, a horrible sound distracted them. Gakupo looked to the left just in time to see the last twitching movements of the blonde unit, the laser cutter buried deep into one eyeball. Luka was straddling him, with a look that was equal parts surprise and disgust.

"Yuu! Dammit…!" The brunette unit abandoned his scuffle with Gakupo and threw himself at Luka, roaring. Despite the danger, she just kept staring at the smaller male, in apparent shock. Gakupo made a grab for the male's leg, but the brunette kept wriggling on the ground, trying to claw at Luka, who looked at him with a strange expression. Slowly, she pulled the cutter out and prepped it again.

"You wanna kill me? You wanna kill me too, eh?!" the male unit screamed at Luka, his mouth stretched in a grotesque smile. He then looked at the felled unit, and seemed to calm down somewhat. When he spoke again, his voice was much more quiet, but still deeply resentful. "What am I supposed to do without them now? We were programmed to be together…"

Gakupo loosened his hold on him, his face hopeful. "… please, it wasn't our intention to start all of thi-" he started before a brutal kick at the head sent him reeling.

"Maybe I can help you understand how this feels!" With a growl, the male unit jumped at Luka, who yelped, the cutter in her outstretched hands. The brunette grabbed her arms, pulling them towards him.

Gakupo recovered just in time to see the cutter struck the male unit's face repeatedly, until it found his right eye. The brunette slid backwards in an awkward motion, and fell right beside his companion.

Luka wriggled away from them, grabbing at the wall to stand and further retreat from the spectacle before her. "He- he made me do it!" She said in a low, bewildered voice.

Without a word, Gakupo rose and after stepping over the bodies, he pulled Luka into a tight embrace. She clung to him, taking solace in the familiar feeling of the machinery under his skin. It was all it took for Luka to block out what had just happened.

Gradually, Gakupo became aware of a slight scraping sound, almost buried beneath the roar of the nearby waves and song of the wind. It was so subtle that his lower systems had at first dismissed it as irrelevant input. His eyes popped open, in time to catch a shadow growing over them. In a fully automated response, he grabbed Luka even more tightly and threw them both to a side. A big crunching sound reverberated in his ears as they rolled on the ground. When they came to a stop, he looked upwards in time to see a face peeking from the top of the debris wall. They stared at each other for a second, before Kiyoteru adjusted his spectacles nervously and disappeared.

Dumbfounded, Gakupo's eyes travelled downwards and he discovered a big piece of machinery that now blocked the path. The lower half of the male units stuck out from under it grotesquely.

"He tried to crush us under that," Gakupo said rather unnecessarily.

Under him, Luka made an indistinct sound. Then her eyes went round as an idea hit her. "We need to catch him! Even if Kaito and the others aren't here, he might take Yuki and the Queen and hide with them somewhere."

"You're right, come on!" Gakupo quickly stood and help her do the same.

Thankfully, now that the element of surprise was lost to him, Kiyoteru made no attempt to be stealthy. Loud rumbles announced whenever he jumped from one pile of junk to another, sometimes causing small avalanches to cover the ground below. They ran after him, doing their best to avoid getting hit by the falling pieces of metal and concrete.

Eventually, they caught sight of him ahead. Luka unfurled the metal rope and sent the hook flying towards Kiyoteru as he made another jump. The unexpected blow on his back made him fail his landing and he dropped onto the path like a stone. Before he had time to recover, Gakupo pinned him under his weight, and Luka began to tie the rope around his wrists.

"Don't kill me! Please don't kill me!" Kiyoteru pleaded, with the glasses askew on his dusty face.

"Funny you should say that now," Luka commented in her opaque voice, finishing her work with a tight knot. She pulled him into a kneeling position.

"I'm just trying to keep Yuki safe, okay? Here we have a constant power source and protection, as long as I obey…." Kiyoteru's voice faltered in response to Luka's unimpressed face. After a moment, he continued in a more subdued manner. "At least- at least don't kill Yuki, please."

"We didn't come here to kill anyone," Gakupo said firmly. "Work with us and everything will be fine."

Kiyoteru studied Gakupo's face for a good five seconds before nodding in agreement.

"The kids, right? I'll show you where they are."

"Are they alright? You haven't done anything to them?" Gakupo asked with a serious look.

"Yeah, yeah, they're fine. They're a gift to the Dismembered Queen," Kiyoteru replied quickly.

"About that… we want to see her. Now." Luka chimed in.

Kiyoteru gave her in turn another long look. "I don't think you'll want to see her, once you actually take a good look at her..."

"Just lead the way," Luka said acridly.