"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!" The father and daughter screamed hard as the three of them reappeared over the clouds and immediately began plummeting down, right above the hangar's supposed location. He ignored the duo for a moment and left them to their screaming. Instead, Satoru turned his attention the hangar. It was right there, Satoru mused, his Six-Eyes narrowing at the target down below. It wasn't especially large; it was smaller, in fact, than most aircraft hangars he'd seen on Earth. Honestly, it was more or less just a hole in the ground, covered by a metallic doorway, like the one he'd seen on plenty of sci-fi action movies, where a cool super-advanced helicopter with freaking laser beams usually docked. Carved upon the metal doorway was the image of a human skill, lacking its lower jaw, a cog behind it, one eye covered with some form of cybernetic implant. What that symbol meant, Satoru did not know, but it was probably important.

Another addition to the giant pile of things he had to figure out soon.

The entryway itself was surrounded by a myriad of other buildings, dilapidated and likely abandoned.

Or something like that. He really wasn't sure. But he wasn't an idiot either and it didn't take a genius to put the pieces together. Satoru's only point of doubt was that it didn't seem likely that the Astartes had somehow missed this place during their... scouring of the entire city. How could they? Those guys weren't pushovers. They were professionals – not backyard hooligans armed with spiked clubs and terrible cologne. However, it also did not look damaged – not like its surrounding area, which looked as though it'd been carpet bombed to hell. And that was strange, since he would've expected the Corgis of Fenris to be thorough in their grizzly work.

And they probably were, which was why Satoru doubted the existence of this apparent space vessel that would take them away from this planet. Still, hope for the best and prepare for the worst. If the Astartes had done their job properly and blew up the vessel before anyone could use it, then – maybe – Satoru could negotiate with Kairos to bring these two along, just to the next planet, at least. Though, he'd rather not do that, especially since the big blue bird was bound to ask for some other ridiculous thing.

The father nodded and walked towards the edge of the closed entrance. And there, Satoru waited and watched as the man searched for father regained his composure quickly enough, though the man's heart hammered in his chest loud enough to sound like war drums, even as the air howled and screeched around them. The daughter, unlike her father, was... absolutely hysterical, screaming so hard that she just just sort of passed out after a moment of it, which was understandable; a lot of human beings had a phobia involving great heights and it seemed like the humans of the future weren't at all immune to it. But it was also a relief, since listening to her scream for the next ten seconds might just be enough to tip him over to the dark side.

He could use Infinity to create a sort of invisible platform of space, which the three of them could stand on, preventing them from plummeting, but this was the funnier option; watching others scream and beg for their lives as they fell a thousand meters from the sky would, Satoru mused, never stop being funny.

Satoru reached out and grabbed the duo, pulling the both of them close to himself. "Hang on!"

He folded space with Blue, once again, but dampened their plummeting velocity by simply absorbing the inertia with Infinity. Satoru blinked and, suddenly, all three of them were standing just a few meters away from the metal doorway on the ground, which was honestly a lot bigger from up close than it was from the sky, about thirty across. Six-Eyes revealed nothing spiritual amiss, though that really didn't reassure him as much as he would've wanted it to. Satoru then turned to the father, who'd fallen to his knees and- oh, he was puking now. Oh, yeah, Yuta also puked his guts out the first time Satoru ever made him fall from about a thousand meters up.

The daughter, meanwhile, was still blissfully unconscious. Satoru chuckled as he lightly tapped the father's back. Idly, he noted the grass dying around them, green fading to gray and black, before withering into dust. "Hurry up with that; we don't want the Astartes find out we're here."

The father nodded and wiped his mouth with his sleeve, before he stood up. "Aye. I'll open it as fast as I can."

"Go ahead and do that," Satoru said. "We don't have a lot of time, I think."

The father nodded and walked towards the edge of theclosed entrance. And there, Satoru waited and watched as the man searched for something by the edges of the massive door; the father would reach under a few openings, only to pull his hand back out, a look of disappointment on his face. His daughter awoke at some point during this, but Satoru ignored her. Dealing with children was never a strong suit of his and he liked to think this would help her build character – or something. Satoru kept his eyes on the father. What was he looking for?

Sooner or later, Satoru was gonna have to find someone to teach him the technology of this time. His ignorance would eventually be his undoing, even he would acknowledge that possibility, given that everything around him – or, at least, most of it – seemed to run on technology that he simply did not understand.

Right by the side of the entrance was a raised platform of some kind, where a podium jutted out, a panel of some sort right on it. Satoru figured the father would try that one first, but it seemed that he was wrong. If he had to guess, then it the man was probably involved in the construction of this hangar, since he seemed to know what he was looking for, even if he was having a hard time at it. And then, something clicked and the father pulled out a long red wire from a hollow space on the side of the door. Satoru blinked and chuckled.

Huh, he never asked for their names, did he?

And then, he understood; these people weren't used to anyone asking for their names. Their aura repelled just about everyone. Hmm, yep, he was going to ask for their names later.

A series of clicks and hisses followed and, like a newly-roused beast, the massive doors groaned open, puffs and clouds of dust erupting as a wave of stale air blasted out of the opening that was growing ever larger with every passing moment. The daughter walked up to her father and Satoru followed closely behind her, his eyes scanning everywhere around them. To be honest, there wasn't much to look at. This hangar was well-hidden, nestled in the middle of a graveyard of ruined buildings and abandoned factories or something; Six-Eyes saw through the shadows and every tiny movement that could be perceived, and this place was as sterile as it could be, relative to the rest of the city. However, Satoru knew that the Astartes would find him eventually. The could track him no matter where he went, it seemed, and he had no doubt that they'd find him soon, here, if they didn't leave swiftly enough.

Satoru turned and glanced down the deep hole right beside him; it looked exactly as he imagined it would, a gray shaft, from where a massive futuristic-looking ship would enter and exit. Freaking awesome. He raised a brow. Down below was a hideous mess of metallic things and technologies Satoru did not recognize or understand. He turned to the duo. "I don't see stairs or lifts anywhere. You guys wanna teleport down there or is there another way down?"

"There is a lift, but time is of the essence." The father replied. "Would you... kindly perform that spell of yours once more? The ship is down there."

Satoru nodded. "Alright. You guys stay close."

They teleported down the deep hole soon after, their feet touching down on solid metal. This must be the ship, he mused. The fact that it actually was shaped kind of like a scaled down battleship from the Second World War was kind of... weird, but in a good way. That was something he definitely noticed about the future; it seemed like everyone unanimously decided to pick a very... gothic design for everything – grandiose and a little gaudy, with human skills and spikes and religious imagery everywhere, kind of like the Vatican, actually, but for an entire city.

"This is it, yeah?" Satoru asked, tapping his foot on the ship's hull a few times. The lack of an echo was an indication of its thickness and oh boy was the plating thiccc; it must've been a hundred centimeters thick, at least, and made of some magical future super alloy.

At his side, the father nodded. "It is. It'll take me ten minutes to start the ship and another five to get her flying... if I ignore the desires of the machine spirit."

It must've been dark for them, but Satoru's Six-Eyes revealed everything in the darkness, the abominations of metal, the dust-ridden cybernetic skeletons, mechanized skulls, and corpses – hundreds of them – cyborg men and women in ancient red robes, all of them on the floor, the remains of them, at least. They must've been dead for several decades now, Satoru figured, based entirely on the thick layer of dust that covered everything in this place. His eyes narrowed. He hadn't felt it from up there, but a faint haze of Cursed Energy lingered here, Satoru mused, one of anguish, betrayal, rage, and death – heavily faded and weakened across many years, but still very much present. The unified aura of the father and daughter duo, however, who possessed true negative Cursed Energy, further weakened the faint haze.

That was an interesting thing to witness.

"Who are these guys?" Satoru asked, pointing at the red-robed corpses as they climbed down the side of the apparent space ship. The vessel did not interest him nearly as much as the figures on the floor, the cyborgs with implants that replaced whole sections of their body – some even had their spines replaced with metal, which was honestly freaking awesome and was exactly how he imagined the future would look like.

The father held out a flare, which he'd pulled out from... somewhere, illuminating the darkness. The man gave him a questioning look. Satoru sent him back a shrug. "These are Tech-Priests. They create, manage, and maintain the great machines of the Imperium. Many decades ago, when I was young, I worked under these Tech-Priests in this very hangar."

Satoru nodded. They climbed down the vessel easily enough. All the spikes and spines and grooves made it easy to find something to hold onto. When they reached the floor, Satoru gestured at the apparent Tech-Priests as the father took lead of their little group and brought them to an opening that Satoru assumed was the entrance to the ship itself. "How'd they end up... ya know... dead?"

The father stopped. "The Planetary Governor... he... he was a very corrupt man. But he could not force the Tech-Priests under his sway as they did not serve him. He wanted the machines here for himself. When the Tech-Priests refused, the Planetary Governor launched an attack against them, but then he found that neither he nor his lackeys understood the technology. And so, he ordered the base of the Tech-Priests sealed and forgotten; I worked on the ships. That was ten years ago. And every day we do not see a Martian fleet flying overhead is a day I thank the God-Emperor for his mercy. Whatever the case, I understand binary and I know the necessary rites to awaken and invoke machine spirit."

"Huh... sounds cool." Satoru said, grinning as he placed his hands in his pockets. What the fuck was a machine spirit? "I have so many questions about a lot of the things you just said, but I'll ask them later. You should probably get started. I think that, by the time you're done, our window of escape is going to be very... small."


AN: (Pat)reon's up to chapter 13 at the moment.