Horizon Loop Escape

by BbK2442

An Elster's dying story and a Bioresonant goddess's last wish results in a certain Eule and Star couple ending up seeing a new horizon very far from home in a world of primitive tribes and beasts of steel.

4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4: A Proving Before the Proving

Eule slid to a stop next to Rost, who was crouched just short of a berm, and crouched down herself. Her gaze briefly flickered to her side as Star gently placed Äloy down next to Rost before crouching down with Eule. Thus, the 2 Gestalts and 2 Replikas gazed down at the scene below them.

The berm turned out to overlook a small valley dotted with rock formations, trees, and large patches of foxtail grass. The Strider herd from earlier was down there in the valley, peacefully grazing as if nothing had happened. All the while, Watchers prowled around their perimeter, ever-watchful for any threats to them, which was what likely earned them their name.

Eule at first couldn't see anything wrong. No hint of who had made that scream before. Then Äloy tapped her on her arm to get her attention, and pointed in a very specific direction, partway up the steep cliff wall surrounding the valley in the distance ahead of them.

Eule's eyes widened in shock and horror as she saw Teb there, dangling by a single arm from a rocky ledge jutting out from the rock wall. It looked as though he fell from further up, and had only just barely managed to grab hold of that bit of rock before he fell all the way down. Solely by his left arm, no less. Eule's heart chilled as she recalled her lessons about Gestalt biology/anatomy for her medical training, and she realized that if that was what had happened, then Teb must've done some damage to his own arm with that one-handed grab.

Indeed, Teb was just dangling there, running in the air and desperately trying to grab hold of the bit of rock with his other arm. But it was as though the young Gestalt man couldn't muster the strength to even pull himself up a bit to reach it. But if he couldn't muster the strength even for that, then surely…

Eule gasped as she saw Teb inevitably lose his grip on that bit of rock. The young Gestalt man screamed as he fell, crashing into and bouncing off of a whole tree before falling down onto the ground with a sickening thud.

Eule wasn't sure if it was Teb's scream or the thud that did it, but every single Machine down in that valley was now on high alert. The Striders all shot their heads up, stumbling back and looking around in alarm with fearfully yellow eyes at whatever spooked them. The Watchers too shot up, rearing up on their 2 legs to scan the area around them with their alert yellow gaze, watching for who or whatever had dared to frighten their charges.

Eule had to tear her gaze from the Machines to try and spot Teb again. She just barely managed to make him out between the branching trunk/roots of a large tree…no, it wasn't. It was a tree growing on top of what looked like the ruins of an old brick building, but that wasn't important right now, so she focused back on Teb.

Teb was lying prone, watching the Machines in front of him with widened eyes. One part of Eule was relieved to see that he was at least conscious. The other parts of Eule were now even more worried, for Teb had surely sustained further injuries from his fall, and she wouldn't know how serious they were until she could get a closer look at him. Certainly much closer than where she was on this cliff.

Eule was suddenly distracted by movement from right next to her. Her eyes widened in alarm as Äloy looked as though she was about to leap down into the valley to help Teb. Eule immediately took hold of her right arm to prevent that, and was relieved to see Rost also take hold of Äloy's left shoulder in the same instant.

"I can do nothing," Rost said in quiet sadness as Äloy looked up at him. "It's only a matter of time before the Machines find that boy and kick him to death." He then sighed. "But if I shoot, it will cause a stampede…and it will trample him."

"Shit," Eule heard Star mutter, causing Eule to turn to look at her wondering face. "Maybe I can quickly run over to him, grab him, and then run back here?" Star asked.

"There's no human alive who can outrun a Strider or even a Watcher," Rost replied.

Star grinned. "No Gestalt, you mean. In case you haven't noticed, I'm not a Gestalt," she pointed out, literally pointing to her own long, white, bird-like mechanical legs.

Rost now looked thoughtfully at Star for a few moments, before finally shaking his head. "Too risky. Even if you are faster than the Machines, a single misstep would result in you being trampled by them along with that boy. And with so many Machines in that herd, including the herd guard machines, the potential for that is too high."

Star looked troubled as she turned her gaze back to the distant Teb. "Damn it, I know you're right, but…we can't just leave him to die."

Eule couldn't help but nod in agreement, but she had no idea what to do either. It's not as though her pistol could help either. She knew for certain that she wasn't a good enough shot to hit every Machine down there in the eyes before they reached her, and she only had a single magazine. Even counting the bullet already loaded into the chamber, she functionally only had 11 rounds for her pistol. She was definitely not going to be gunning down every Machine down there, even with Star's and Rost's help, and Rost didn't even have a gun.

And yet…Eule couldn't leave someone to die like this either.

Eule was thus thinking so deeply about the problem that she was flummoxed when Äloy announced: "But I can see the paths they take."

Rost looked at Äloy sternly. "Stop telling–" he began.

"Wait, but how?" Eule asked, not meaning to interrupt Rost, but she was desperate for some kind of solution to this problem, and she knew Äloy was intelligent enough that she may have figured something out.

"The Focus. It's showing me their path," Äloy insisted.

Eule stared directly at the closest Machine: a Watcher on the prowl for intruders with its eye glowing yellow. Her Focus scanned it, and subsequently revealed some very interesting information about the Watcher's composition and weakness (like the very obvious eye), but nothing else beyond that.

"I'm not seeing anything. Are you sure?" Eule asked.

"I am," Äloy insisted. "You just need to press on it, and–oh no."

Eule looked at where Äloy was looking, and her eyes widened in horror as a Strider started to approach the ruined building where Teb was hiding.

"We need to save him now," Äloy said. "Don't worry, I can sneak through–"

Eule immediately grabbed Äloy by the arm just as she was moving and pulled the little Gestalt girl back to her side. "No, Äloy. You can't. It's too dangerous. Please, just let us think of something," Eule said, well aware that she was grasping at straws at this point.

"Aloy, I'm sorry, but you're just a child right now," Rost said consolingly, but also firmly. "Let us handle this."

"…Okay," Äloy said dejectedly.

Eule didn't like how depressed Äloy sounded, but it was better than Äloy endangering herself. She reached up and pressed on her Focus to bring up its menu, trying to see if there was some option for some kind of alternative scan mode that she may have missed–

It was only because Eule had learned to keep an eye on Äloy at all times that she saw Äloy suddenly dash forwards.

Eule immediately reached out for Äloy's arm, but Äloy dodged at the last second. Eule immediately recovered and grabbed at the closest thing she could reach: Äloy's blue scarf. She succeeded in grabbing ahold of it, and then watched in horror as the scarf came loose from Äloy's neck.

Rost reached out at the same time Eule did when he saw that Äloy was dashing forward. He reached towards Äloy to pull her back down, only for his hand to grab her bow instead. The motion of his downward pull yanked the bow down to Äloy's feet, causing Äloy to tumble forward and down the berm.

"Aloy!" Eule and Rost called out quietly at the same time.

Eule watched as Äloy rolled across the ground, and into a patch of foxtail grass just as a Watcher stalked by. The Watcher stalked dangerously close to where Eule was hiding with Star and Rost, forcing them all to move a bit further back as it swept the area just underneath them with its yellow gaze. Seeing nothing threatening, its eye turned a calm blue once more before it continued its patrol.

Eule peeked back over the berm, looking down at Äloy, who'd gotten back to her feet and was crouched in the foxtail grass. Eule beckoned for her to climb up back. She knew that Äloy was more than agile enough to do it thanks to that slope underneath the berm. Out of the corners of her vision, she could see Rost and even Star doing the same.

Äloy then looked back over to where Teb was, before looking back at Eule. The little Gestalt girl looked straight into Eule's eyes with a fiery determination in her own eyes, and mouthed quietly: "I can do it. I can sneak through. I can save him."

Thus, Eule watched in horror as Äloy turned around and moved to the edge of the patch of foxtail grass she was in, straight towards where Teb laid.

"Äloy, wait–"

Eule felt a strong Star hand and a strong Rost hand as well clamp onto both of her arms and pull her back. She then looked into the face of Star, who shook her head. "You can't bring her back now, and I can't lose you too. All we can do is pray to the Red Eye to watch over Äloy…and hopefully we can help the kid out when she needs it."

Eule turned her head to then look into the face of Rost, who had a grim look on said face. "Shtar is right. We can't help Aloy by just charging in. We need to bide our time and wait for an opportunity to help, as a good hunter must."

Eule took a deep breath, gripping Äloy's scarf in her hand tightly and trying to calm herself. She wondered how on Rotfront Äloy's scarf could've come loose so easily when her scarf was normally tied on fairly tightly…only to realize that this time, Äloy's scarf hadn't been tied on tightly. The intelligent and crafty little Gestalt girl had deliberately loosened her own scarf, anticipating that Eule would try to grab at it to stop her. Äloy was smart enough to do it…and yet wasn't smart enough to realize the danger she'd put herself in by doing that.

Eule wished she had a mirror, but the river was too far away and now far too shallow for her to see her reflection in. She wished she could sing something or dance a bit, but it would only draw the Machines' attention. Most of all, she wished she could just bring Äloy back, and while she was at it, she might as well wish she was Bioresonant too so that she could pull a Falke-style teleport to bring both Äloy and Teb over here.

But her love and Rost were right. She couldn't bring Äloy back now. All she can do is try and help the brave little Gestalt girl however she could with whatever she had–

A thought suddenly occurred to Eule. After carefully tucking Äloy's blue scarf into one of her ammo pouches in the spare space between the pouch's inner surface and the ammo box, she pulled off her backpack, reached into it, and pulled out the rock she tossed in earlier before returning her backpack to its original position. She had kept the rock out of whimsy, but now, perhaps it may be of some use.

In the corner of her vision, Eule saw Rost nod in approval at her idea before gently putting Äloy's tiny bow away onto his belt to unsling his own full-sized bow. It seemed that in spite of his own words about firing a bow likely causing a stampede, he still wanted to be ready in case he could distract a Machine with an arrow.

Star though had the same idea Eule did, and picked up a nearby rock of her own. "Good idea. We can distract any Machines that see the kid before they can get her. Hopefully," Star said with as much optimism as she could put into it despite her final word.

Eule gently held Star's hand in reassurance before turning her attention back to Äloy.

The brave little Gestalt girl was still crouched on the edge of that foxtail grass patch, seemingly waiting for something. That something came in the form of the Watcher from earlier. The moment it stalked past Äloy, she immediately moved out, covering a decent amount of ground and yet quiet enough that not a single Machine noticed her before she made it into the next patch of foxtail.

To Eule's amazement, little Äloy continued this pattern. It was as though Äloy knew exactly where the Watchers were going to go and even where they were going to stop and scan the area in front of them, and waited for them to not be in her way before making her move to the next foxtail patch.

In between these moves, Eule noticed that Äloy reached up to touch her Focus, looking at the Watchers while she kept her hand on her Focus. Now curious, Eule mimicked Äloy's actions on her own Focus.

To her surprise and amazement, holding down the Focus seemed to cause it to enter some kind of…wide-spread full scan mode. The Focus didn't just scan what Eule was directly looking at now. It also scanned everything within her field of vision. Eule could see colored outlines forming over everything moving thing in her field of vision, from the Machines to even small animals darting through the valley floor, seemingly unbothered and unmolested by the Machines.

Even more importantly though, Eule could now see circular paths made of series of translucent blue triangles, with some of the triangles being larger than the others at set intervals. It was immediately clear what these paths were as Eule watched a Watcher follow the path it was on exactly as her Focus displayed it as. It even stopped right on the larger triangles to raise itself up and scan in front of it.

"Äloy was right," Eule said quietly, making Star and Rost look at her as she continued. "She had been seeing the paths the Machines were taking, and she's continuing to see them even now. Oh, why couldn't she have been quicker to explain it? If only we had more time for Äloy's explanation to have come to its conclusion–"

Rost placed a gentle hand on Eule's shoulder. "Stop. Contemplating the 'what ifs' of this won't do you or anyone else here any good. We need to focus on the present, and help Aloy however we can," he said, before his face fell with a regret-filled frown. "For that matter, I was at fault too. I should've paid more attention to Aloy instead of dismissing that…Focus as a toy. I will need to apologize to her after this. Will you and Shtar help me make that happen?"

Eule nodded vehemently. "Yes. Absolutely. We'll do everything we can to help," she said, with her previous feelings verging on despair now replaced with a fiery determination. With a quick glance at Star to see her lover nodding in agreement, she then returned her attention to the brave little Gestalt girl trying to save a Gestalt boy's life down there in that valley.

Amazingly, Äloy had nearly reached the ruins where Teb was lying there, staring with wide eyes at Äloy perfectly dodging every Watcher. There was just one obstacle left: a small, shallow-looking river between Äloy and the next patch of foxtail. Eule watched Äloy once more wait for the patrolling Watcher to pass by before moving out and making her way across the river–

Eule's biomechanical heart practically leapt into her mouth when she saw Äloy stumble, likely slipping on something in the water, before quickly recovering and diving into the patch of foxtail in front of her.

Unfortunately, the splashing sounds caused by Äloy's stumble caused the nearest Watcher to spin around in shock, its eye now glowing a suspicious yellow. The Watcher then began to stalk towards where it had heard that sound, which unfortunately was taking it right in the direction of the very foxtail patch Äloy was hiding in.

Eule wasn't going to let it discover Äloy. Hefting the rock in her hand, she stood up and lobbed the rock, mimicking Äloy's throw from earlier, before quickly crouching back down.

The rock rose up in an arcing trajectory before coming back down. Eule had been aiming for an area just behind the Watcher, hoping to divert its attention from Äloy. Instead, Eule's mouth fell open in shock as she watched the rock she threw come straight down on the Watcher's hip and bounced off it with a loud clang, Eule having apparently overshot her mark by a fair distance.

The Watcher immediately sprang around, looking around in the direction of Eule, Star, and Rost for whatever had hit it. Its yellow gaze soon fell on the rock Eule had thrown. It gently nudged the rock with its head, making curious clicking sounds. It then rose up on its legs, scanning the area and making Eule duck back down further just on the off-chance the Watcher could see her. On either side of her, she watched Star and Rost do the same thing, not wanting to chance the possibility that the Watcher might spot them.

At last though, the Watcher apparently decided that it must've been a random rock that fell from the sky, and thus nothing to worry about anymore. It was the only explanation Eule could come up with for why its eye returned to a calm blue, and it continued on its patrol path.

As Eule breathed out a sigh of relief, she looked to Star with an embarrassed grin. Star only gave her a smile and a thumbs-up in reply, apparently deciding that even an accidental job well done deserved praise.

As for Rost, he merely sighed and nodded. "It was a good throw in the end. That's all that matters," he said quietly and consolingly.

Eule could only give an embarrassed chuckle in reply before returned her gaze to the valley, looking around for Äloy. She soon found the little Gestalt girl crouched right next to Teb, apparently having used the distraction to sneak past. Eule couldn't tell what it was they were talking about from this distance, but if she was him, she would've been very glad that someone had come to her rescue, even if that someone was only a small child…who apparently managed to sneak past a small army of herd guard Machines almost completely undetected.

Eule watched Äloy sneak out of the ruins into a large patch of foxtail next to it, right past the Strider that had wandered so close to said ruins. As it turned out, it wasn't searching for Teb at all. It apparently wanted a better spot of grass to graze or it had calmed down mid-search, because now it had its head down and was grazing said grass, completely oblivious to the little Gestalt girl walking right past it. Thus, it was perfectly safe for Äloy to beckon for Teb to follow.

Eule immediately realized that something was wrong when not only did Teb not immediately follow, but when he did, he was clearly limping. Clearly, the fall he took must've caused some sort of leg injury. But since it did, it meant that Teb physically couldn't move as fast as Äloy, and so might not be capable of enough agility to avoid the Watchers, even with Äloy telling him when to go. As it was, Teb was only able to make it to the foxtail patch because the Strider was so utterly oblivious to everything around it during its grazing.

Eule's worry was so great that, once more, she nearly jumped out of her polyethylene shell when Rost tapped her on the shoulder.

"Follow me. The boy can't move fast with his injury. We need to get closer to them," Rost said quietly.

Eule nodded and proceeded to do just that. A quick glance behind at the sound of footsteps showed Star following them as well, who gave her a reassuring nod in reply. Eule calmed down a bit at that, which wasn't very much, but it was still better than before.

Fortunately, Rost didn't take them very far. It was just across the river really, resulting in them ending hiding behind a rock formation overlooking a shallow slope. Peeking out from behind the rock formation, Eule saw that they now had a direct line of sight on Äloy and Teb, who were both hiding in a patch of foxtail. Äloy saw her and nodded, beckoning Teb to follow as she and the Gestalt boy now made their way to them.

Unfortunately, in between Äloy and Teb, and safety, was a patrolling Watcher. By pure bad luck, it happened to be walking a circular patrol path right around the patch of foxtail Äloy and Teb were hiding in. Eule watched Äloy reach into her medicine pouch and feed Teb one of the salvebrush berries she picked earlier, but she wasn't certain if it would help in time.

"Hey, Rost," Star said suddenly, making Eule turn to look at her despite not being the one she was addressing. "You think you can head over there and take out that Watcher to make it easier for them to sneak past?"

Rost stroked his beard in thought. "If I kill that Watcher in the right spot and hide it, then the other Watchers might not notice. It would still be a short window though, so I would prefer to carry Teb out."

"So what's stopping you?" Star asked.

Eule realized even as Star asked that question. "Because you're an outcast," she said.

Rost nodded dejectedly. "For me to pick him up would be a breach of tribal law. I don't fear any consequences for myself, but I fear the consequences for that boy. If word ever got out that an outcast interacted with him in such a manner…I don't think the High Matriarchs would punish him too severely under those circumstances. However, I don't like taking that risk. Not unless I have no other choice."

"What about me? I'm an outsider, so those laws wouldn't apply to me just picking that Teb boy up, right?" Star asked.

Rost's eyes widened in realization, and he nodded. "Yes, you're right. Alright, here's the plan then: I'll take down the Watcher. Once that's done, I want you to pick up the boy and head over here to safety. I'll be right behind you, so don't stop on my account."

Star nodded. "I'll take that plan. Mind if I also pick up Äloy along the way? I can carry her and Teb no problem, and still move faster than Äloy can run."

Rost blinked at Star in surprise before nodding. "If you believe you can handle it, then please do so." Eule then watched Rost turned back to her. "Eu-le, stay here and keep an eye out for Machines coming our way. If any do approach, distract them with thrown rocks. Let us know if you see us watching too."

Eule nodded firmly. "Alright. I can do that."

Rost simply nodded back in reply before turned his view back to the Watcher circling Äloy and Teb's foxtail patch. As soon as the Watcher walked to the far side of that patch, Rost made his move. He dashed to the closest foxtail patch, which happened to be right next to the one Äloy and Teb were in, with Star following right behind him. Then, as the Watcher rose up to scan the area in the direction away from them, Rost and Star moved right into Äloy and Teb's foxtail patch.

Eule couldn't make out what they were doing or saying, so she kept an eye on the Strider herd and its Watcher guards. Fortunately, the Striders were as oblivious as before, and the other Watchers were busy patrolling the other areas around the herd's perimeter. There were only so many Watchers, so they couldn't afford more than a single one per sector. It was the perfect opportunity to take one down.

Which is exactly what Rost did. In the side of her vision, Eule watched Rost spring out and drive his spear into the chest of what must've been a very surprised Watcher, which soon became a very dead Watcher. Rost had killed the Watcher right when it was in an area where the tall foxtail grass obscured the Watcher's corpse from the rest of the herd, making it very unlikely that the other Machines would notice its passing.

The moment the Watcher fell to the ground, Star made her move. The Security Technician Guard Replika rose up to her full 220 cm height, carrying Äloy under one arm and Teb under the other, and began running right towards Eule.

The cramped confines of S-23 Sierpinski meant that Eule had never seen her lover build up to her full speed. As she watched Star sprint though, she suddenly appreciated just how fast the Star units were. It barely took a few seconds for Star to run the distance from that distant patch of foxtail all the way to Eule's position. Then, as if to show off, Star then leapt up all the way from the bottom of the berm all the way to the top, bypassing the whole slope entirely, all while carrying a pair of Gestalt children. As Star gently put Äloy back on the ground and even more gently placed Teb on the same, Eule gave her lover a hug and a kiss on the cheek for her efforts, then hugged Äloy tightly (Eule would save any scolding for later, when they were all in a safe area) and gave her a brief examination for injuries (she had none, to Eule's relief), before crouching down to give Teb a proper medical examination.

"Are you okay, Teb?" Eule asked with concern. "You took a high fall back there. Do you feel any pain anywhere?"

"Umm, my foot. My right one, actually. I landed right on it when I fell," Teb admitted. "I can walk on it, but it really hurts when I do so, even after this girl, All-Mother bless her, gave me a salvebrush berry for it."

Eule looked at the foot in question. "Do you mind if I remove your boot? I need to examine your injury, and I can't do it with it in the way."

"Oh, oh yes. Of course. Feel free to do so," Teb replied with a nod. As Eule gently worked his right boot free, she heard him ask: "Wait, um, wha–I mean, who are you? I, um, I didn't want to say 'What' because it sounds really rude to talk about a person that way, but umm, you look kind of…weird…er, now that I can see you up close."

Eule didn't immediately reply as she finally removed Teb's right shoe and got a look at his foot, handing it back to him to hold while she did so. There was significant swelling and a darkened bruise right at his ankle on its right side, but fortunately, there was no skin breakage to indicate a very badly broken bone. In any case, she doubted Teb could've walked on it if it had been that badly broken. Still, better safe than sorry, especially since she most definitely did not have access to an X-ray machine to determine if Teb did have a fractured bone in his right foot.

"You have either a sprain or a fractured calcaneus, er, your heel bone," Eule explained when Teb gave her a blank look at the medical term. "I would highly recommend that you immobilize that foot and not walk on it for a while until your injury heals, just in case it is a bone fracture. Oh, and my name is Eule. My, um, mate there is Star."

"Oy-le? Thank you, Oyle. I'm not sure if my father will let me, but…" Teb trailed off, making Eule suddenly worry about him and what his father is like, before he suddenly turned to her lover and said: "Oh, thank you too, Shtar. All-Mother bless you both."

Star grinned at him, making Teb blink at her in surprise at seeing her dark grey carbon steel teeth for the first time. "Thanks, kid. I'm more than happy to help, especially since it means I actually get to be a Protektor who protects for a change," she said happily.

Teb looked blankly at her and even more blankly at Eule giving Star a rueful grin at her self-deprecatory humor, before suddenly looking behind Eule. "Oh, and All-Mother bless you and your little girl, too. Especially her."

Eule turned to look as she saw Rost had finally joined them at last, and as usual, almost without making a single sound, save for some low murmuring to Äloy in which Eule distinctly heard the words "sorry" and "Focus" among them (which made Eule glad that Rost had followed through on his promise to apologize to Äloy). Even now, Rost refused to speak a word to Teb because of that outcast business. Refused to even meet Teb's eyes, actually. Äloy though was more than happy to not only look Teb in the eye, but even grin happily at him for his compliment.

Teb grinned back before gingerly putting his boot back on and standing up, leaning on his uninjured foot, Eule noticed. "I mean it. All-Mother bless you both. She saved me. If it hadn't been for her, I'd be–"

"Boy!" a male voice shouted, startling Eule into looking in the direction the voice came from.

Eule watched as an older Gestalt man walked, stomped really, towards them, flanked by a pair of younger Gestalt men. All of them were dressed in animal skins covered in metal plates similar to Rost, and all were armed with spears decorated with colorful feathers that didn't detract from the lethality of the metal blades just in front of them. Even more unfortunately, Eule did not need a Eule's face-reading skills to know that the shouting Gestalt man was very, very angry.

Teb looked very nervous and a bit frightened, but still he pressed on. "I…I just wanted–"

"BOY!" the Gestalt man shouted even more loudly as he reached Teb. He then aggressively leaned into Teb's face, making Teb look down to avoid his eyes, and hissed: "Seal your lips!" before turning to look at the group before him.

Eule did not like that look. The Gestalt man looked at Rost–who had turned his gaze downward–with disgust, as if he were looking at a disease-ridden animal rather a human being. The look he gave her and Star was much the same, with a sneer added for extra disgust. However, the look he gave little Äloy was even worse than that. He looked at her with hate and…fear? As if Äloy had personally done something to mortally offend him, but had also done something to make him afraid of her. Eule was certain neither of those scenarios could've possibly happened in a legitimate way, and so she did not like this rage-filled Gestalt man who looked at adorable little Äloy like she was a monster in the slightest.

"They are outcasts, both," the angry Gestalt man practically spat. "And she…is motherless," the man spat, saying that last word as though it was a curse, and advancing towards Äloy as if he meant to harm her.

Rost immediately stepped in front of Äloy, still with eyes downcast, at the same time Eule stepped to the side to block the angry Gestalt man's path, with Star stepping forward to stand beside Eule, glaring at the angry Gestalt man with the sternest Star officer face she could muster.

The angry Gestalt man stumbled back, clutching his spear more tightly. "Who are you, no, what are you?!" he hissed, looking back and forth at Eule and Star.

Eule gave him her most polite smile she can think of, trying to imitate the exceedingly polite smile she'd seen EULR-S2302 "Februar" give an irate Storch who'd complained that the food she got wasn't salty enough…after having just complained about the food being too salty and thus forcing Februar to cook her a new plate of food. It had been so polite that Februar had given not a single clue to the Storch about her building anger, and it was only when the Storch had been gone for a while (after Februar had handed the Storch a salt shaker and very politely suggested that she season her food herself until she was satisfied with it) that Februar began muttering darkly about the Storch, cooking as hard as she could to seemingly vent her rage and frustration into the food.

Eule had made sure to pair up with Februar in the Eule dorm that night (or what passed for it in S-23 Sierpinski) for singing, both to help her relax after that and because she liked complementing Februar's slightly deeper voice for a Eule. Thus, Eule drew upon her memories of dear Februar to help her perfect her imitation of her.

"We're merely a pair of outsiders who are not fond of people who threaten young children," Eule said, keeping a very polite tone to accompany her very polite Februar smile.

"Yeah, why don't you try bullying people your own size? Or do you feel so manly and strong picking on a little kid half your size? Maybe you're compensating for your lack of size somewhere else?" Star asked with a cocky grin.

One of the younger Gestalt men (or rather, boy of around Teb's age, now that Eule had a better look at him) snickered, making the angry Gestalt man spin around to glare at him before he turned back to Eule, still giving her a look of fury that was now tinged with embarrassment. The fury seemed to only deepen when he looked into Eule's eyes, and looked down at her white bird-like mechanical legs.

"The Tainted grow ever more Tainted, I see. Wouldn't be surprised if your mothers bred with Machines!" the angry Gestalt man spat. Literally. He spat at Eule's peg-like feet before turning around and growling: "Come now! Back to Mother's Heart!"

With one last look of fury at Eule and Star, he then grabbed Teb by the arm and forced the boy to follow him. Teb gave them a look of apology, as if he felt he needed to apologize for the angry Gestalt man's behavior. Eule's own fury only built along with a good amount of worry when the angry Gestalt man cuffed Teb on the back of the head hard enough to nearly knock Teb over, despite Teb clearly limping as he walked with them.

"Fucking piece of shit," Star muttered with her own anger. "Bastard's done that before," she noted.

Eule looked at her lover in alarm. "You mean he beats Teb?"

"Looks like it. He did that so casually. Like he's used to hitting Teb whenever it suits him," Star growled.

Eule now looked at the retreating figure of Teb with a new level of worry before turning to Rost, who she noted now had a look on his face that combined worry with anger, which given his usually stoic face, must speak volumes of what he was actually feeling underneath.

"Can you do something to help him?" Eule asked him.

Rost shook his head sadly. "Outcast. I can't speak to anyone in the tribe about it, and speaking to other outcasts about it will only serve to vent my own frustrations about it." He then sighed. "And even if I could tell anyone about it, a parent has absolute right to raise their child unless there is obvious and extreme cases of abuse. That, unfortunately, is not extreme enough to satisfy that requirement," he said, his normally stoic face now looking to Eule like someone who was eating a pickled plum and really didn't like it.

Eule frowned and looked at the now very distant figure of Teb walking with the angry Gestalt man that she now knew was his very horrible father, which she realized made a horrible amount of sense after recalling Teb's face and comparing it with the face of that angry Gestalt man. They shared very similar facial structures, and even had matching hair color. Thus, Teb was likely living with a man who beat him for any reason he can think of, and likely even for no reason at all. Eule silently prayed to the Red Eye to watch over Teb and ensure his safety.

Eule then felt a small hand tug at her own right hand, and looked down to see Äloy looking up at her. "Is Teb's father hitting him because I saved him?" the little Gestalt girl asked.

Eule sighed. "I don't know. I don't know what goes on in the minds of people who like to hit other people for fun like that. All I can say is: I think Teb's father would've probably hit him for something else even if you hadn't come along," she said dejectedly.

Äloy frowned in the direction of where Teb, his father, and the other Gestalt men had gone. "Teb's father is mean. I hate him," she said with a firm nod.

"You and me both, kid. You and me both," Star said with her own firm nod.

Rost breathed out a sigh, as if he was trying to breathe out his own anger and worry with it. "Come now, we can do no more for Teb right now. For now, let's just calm down with a brief meal before we head back. Here."

Rost then reached into one of his seemingly innumerable pouches, and pulled out balls of…something reddish brown with nearly black splotches on each ball, each of which was around the size of a golf ball. He handed one to everyone before taking a ball himself and biting into it with obvious relish.

Rost then took out a large bag that looked like it was made of black Machine muscle coated in the just as black Machine skin from his belt, took out a short length of black tubing that looked as though it was plastic from a small leather bag tied to the "neck" of the bag, inserted it into what Eule guessed was its opening, and drank from the bag via that tube as though it was a straw before handing it to Äloy, who did the same.

The little Gestalt girl then held it out to Eule, who took hold of it, feeling the strange texture of the thick bag and then feeling the black tube, confirming that they were both indeed plastic, before tipping a bit of the liquid within into her mouth. As it turned out, it was just lukewarm water, but it was still refreshing after all that trouble from before.

After taking another sip of water before handing it to Star, Eule then sniffed at what was obviously some sort of food in her white-gloved hand. The ball smelled…meaty to her, with a distinct hint of honey and fruit, which suggested some kind of savory-sweet food. The ball also felt soft, deforming slightly in her gentle grip rather than rigidly retaining its shape, suggesting a soft food of some kind. Now with her curiosity thoroughly piqued, she daintily took a bite out of the ball.

Eule was indeed correct on her initial assumptions on its taste, but it still didn't prepare her for the gustatory details reaching her biocomponent tongue. She could tell from the flavor alone that much of the ball was basically fatty pork that had been crushed into an almost powdery texture similar to pork floss, but there was the sweet taste of honey complementing the rich savory taste of the pork meat and pork fat, and underneath that was a familiar fruity taste of…blueberries! Yes, there was the sweet-tart taste of blueberries mixed in with the honey, balancing out how overwhelmingly sweet the honey was and producing a lovely balance of flavors.

Such was the deliciousness of this sweet-savory pork ball that Eule ended up gobbling the rest of it, chewing it with as much relish as Rost did.

"From the sounds you're making, I take it you like the taste of trailmeat?" Rost asked.

Eule nodded, taking the time to chew and swallow first before replying: "So you call this dish 'trailmeat'? I take it then that this is supposed to be some kind of food for long-distance traveling?"

Rost looked thoughtful for a moment. "Well, thinking about it, I would call it more almost-trailmeat, since dried boar and boar fat was the only dried meat and fat I had available. It's not quite as long-lasting as true trailmeat should be, but it still fills a hunter's belly just as well."

Eule nodded once more, just in understanding this time. If the goal of this "trailmeat" was to have a long shelf life, then lard was probably not the best way to go about it. It's simply too moist, and so spoiled more easily.

"Well, if it's not going to keep anyways, mind if I have seconds?" Star asked, bright and eager for more.

Eule giggled a bit at seeing Rost look at Star with a raised eyebrow. "Most hunters would feel sufficiently satisfied at just a single ball of trailmeat. Although…you do seem to eat a lot than Eu-le. Is it normal for you to eat this much?"

"Yeah, pretty much," Star admitted. "We Stars are built for law enforcement…and combat as well. We've got more powerful muscles, but that means we need to eat more. Especially after doing some intense labor, like running at full speed carrying a pair of Gestalts for half the trip?"

Rost looked at Star's eager face for a moment longer before he sighed and handed over another ball of trailmeat to her, which she devoured just as eagerly as the first, downing it with water immediately afterwards before handing the bag back to Eule. Eule briefly wondered just how long it took to weave this bag out of Machine muscle and then cover it in Machine skin before taking one more gulp from it and handing it back to Rost, who in turn took another sip from it before pulling the pipe bit from it the drinking end and tying the bag back to his belt.

"Alright, now that we're hopefully feeling a little better now, let's get back to butchering that Strider and Watcher before they attract scavengers," Rost said, beckoning for Eule, Star, and Äloy to follow him.

"Wait, but the Machines are, well, Machines, right? What could possibly scavenge them?" Eule asked, now morbidly curious.

"Maybe Machine crows? Or Machine rats?" Star joked. When Rost didn't laugh though, Eule watched Star's grin disappear from her face. "Wait, are there actually Machine crows and rats that, what, scavenge dead Machines?"

"You're…not that far off, Shtar," Rost admitted. "Glinthawks don't normally fly this far eastward at this time of the year but…if either of you hear anything that sounds like…Machine laughing, then tell me. Now. So that we can run. While I normally don't like to waste kills like that, there's no point in risking our lives fighting a pack of Scrappers over them."

Eule just blinked at Rost, as Star surely did. "Glinthawks? Scrappers? Machine laughing?" Eule asked with increasing worry.

"I will tell you if we hear them, and describe them to you if we don't," Rost replied.

Eule grimaced at him and sighed. She honestly hoped that she wouldn't get to find out what those Machines are, but what with how this day has been going, her hope was a bit…wan there as she followed Rost back the way they'd came, basically making their little outing in reverse. Only this time, Star was holding Eule's hand as she walked next to her. Eule liked the feeling of walking like this, Star's warm black hand holding her white-gloved hand, and wondered if Star was just as perturbed by the day's events as she was.

Still, she had no complaints about Star, and Äloy walking next to her on her other side still gave her no small amount of happiness despite the clever little Gestalt girl pulling that trick on Eule–

Thinking about Äloy suddenly reminded Eule. She reached into one of her ammo pouches, carefully pulled out the blue scarf she'd so carefully tucked into it, and held it out to Äloy. "I believe this is yours?" she asked the little Gestalt girl.

Äloy made a tiny squeak in the back of her mouth at the sight of her scarf and what it meant before she carefully took back her scarf and tied back onto her neck…tightly this time.

"You're not mad, are you, Eu-le?" Äloy asked carefully, glancing between Eule's eyes and the rocky ground below as they walked.

Eule stared at Äloy in surprise before carefully taking the smart and brave little Gestalt girl into a one-armed hug. "Äloy, I would never be mad over you over that. If anything, I was worried sick. Do you have any idea just how much danger you put yourself in? What if you'd made a mistake and the Machines had seen you? You very nearly got spotted by that Watcher if it wasn't for our help. What if it had attacked you, or alerted the entire herd and its comrades? You could have been injured or worse! Äloy, you could've died!" she almost screamed.

Eule watched Äloy's grass-green eyes look up into her own blue eyes, and the little Gestalt girl tightly returned her hug. "I'm sorry for worrying you, Eu-le. It's just…I couldn't just sit there and not help Teb. It seemed like you, Rost, and Shtar were taking forever to come up with a plan. If you'd taken longer, I was afraid the Machines would find Teb first."

Eule took a deep breath to calm herself and to think about what Äloy said before replying: "Yes, that's a valid point. But…couldn't you have just talked your plan over with us before jumping in like that? We could've helped? We might've been able to even come up with a better version of your plan if you had talked it over with us." Eule took another calming breath. "I know I'm just a Eule. I'm not made for combat in the slightest, but…couldn't you have trusted me to be able to help you just a bit?"

"Maybe me too?" Star added from somewhere above and behind Eule's head. "I am a Star, after all. I wasn't exactly made for fighting Machine horses and…whatever the Watchers are supposed to be, but I like to think that I could've done something useful in combat."

Rost didn't say anything. He didn't need to. His raised eyebrow at Äloy spoke volumes all on its own.

Äloy looked back and forth between Eule, Star, and Rost before nodding. "Okay. If there's any more dangerous stuff like with Teb, then I'll talk with Rost and you two first, okay? I promise."

Eule nodded back and smiled at little Äloy. "I'll accept that promise, and trust that you keep your word on it."

Fortunately, the journey back to where the Strider and Watcher carcasses laid was otherwise uneventful, and the carcasses themselves were undisturbed. Whether by any of these scavenger Machines or otherwise, which Eule was thankful for. Judging by Rost's relieved nod, he was in full agreement with her.

"Come then, Aloy. Let me show you how to butcher a Strider. You can learn how to butcher it for yourself later," Rost announced as he strode over to the aforementioned Strider.

"Do you mind if I watch as well?" Eule asked. "I would love to learn how to help with butchering it."

"Not at all, Eu-le. Having a second pair of hands to help with this at a later time would be most welcome," Rost replied.

Eule smiled very broadly at him. "Then perhaps maybe a second pair of hands to help with cooking could be welcome at a later time then?" she asked not so subtly.

Rost gave her a most neutral look in reply to that and said nothing. It wasn't an outright denial like the last few times though, so Eule counted that as a small victory.

"You can watch if you wish to too, Shtar," Rost said, seemingly wanting to change the subject.

"Learning to butcher a robot horse? Sure, why not. I've haven't got anything better to do, after all," Star replied cheerfully.

Rost gave a final nod to them before he got to work. He lifted one of the Strider's front legs up, and then stabbed his knife into the front of its belly. He cut along said belly from the front all the way to where the anus would be on a real horse, lifting the back leg clear during that final bit of cutting.

Once that was done, Rost lifted the severed Machine skin and synthetic muscle bundles up, revealing that the Strider had devices within that resembled internal organs in an interesting yet slightly disturbing way to Eule, even if she couldn't even begin to identify what each "organ" was.

Rost pointed at a very familiar-looking large black bag of synthetic muscle covered with what looked like a layer of flexible black Machine skin. A pair of plastic tubes leading from the 2…feeding nozzles (is the best Eule could describe them as) converged into a single large tube before entering said sac from the front, while another similarly sized plastic tube emerged out the other end of the sac, leading deeper into the Strider towards its "spine", into the empty space where the Blaze canister had been. The large back-facing tube was double-headed though, with it splitting off at the Blaze canister end and leading into a mysterious device-organ just behind the sac, which itself had a pair of tubes connecting it back to the pair of feeding tubes in the front. Another pair of smaller plastic tubes led from the large sac to a plastic canister that was sandwiched between the sac and the device-organ.

"This is the Strider's stomach. It's where it digests the plants it eats into Blaze. It's also one of the more valuable parts of a Strider, if it's intact, that is. Which fortunately, this one is," Rost explained when he pointed at the black bag, thus confirming to Eule what that black waterskin from earlier was.

Rost reached in, and detached the large tubes at both ends of the Strider's stomach by loosening some kind of nut at where the tubes connected to the stomach. He then carefully detached the smaller tubes from it with the same methods as the larger tubes, before pulling the entire stomach out to show everyone.

"An intact Strider stomach is, as you probably noticed earlier, an excellent waterskin after you thoroughly wash it out. It can not only hold a large amount of water, but it's also highly durable and long-lasting. With the addition of a cloth bag to hold it in, you can even cool the water within by soaking that cloth bag prior to drinking from the waterskin," Rost explained to his students (which Eule counted herself and Star as) before putting the Strider stomach into Eule's backpack.

Rost then reached into the Strider and pulled out the plastic canister that had been behind the stomach. He then checked every square centimeter of the canister (presumably for damage, Eule assumed) before proceeding to undo the plastic tubes from it just as carefully as he undid them from the stomach.

"This canister is full of a substance we call Metalbite. It's a corrosive liquid the Machines use to digest plants into Blaze," Rost explained as he worked. "Metalbite has a number of uses, not least of which is waste cleaning. We pour it on human waste to let the Metalbite digest it, which over time turns it into something resembling rich earth. We then collect it and pour it back onto the earth, returning the life we take from All-Mother back to her so that the cycle can begin anew."

Eule suddenly realized something from that explanation. "Is that why you had Star and I use that particular toilet instead of the other one?" she asked.

Rost nodded. "That toilet is one that's already full, and to which I had added in some Metalbite. I'm just waiting for it to do its work before I empty it."

Eule nodded back in reply (as well as fascination of the novel use of this Metalbite substance) as Rost finally removed the tubing before carefully laying the canister onto a leather sheet, tying it up with muscle wire, and then putting the entire bundle with just as much care into Eule's backpack.

"Also, a word of caution about Metalbite: always handle Metalbite containers with leather gloves or sheets when opening and closing them. If you get any Metalbite on your skin, immediately wash it off with water, because Metalbite will burn your skin otherwise. Finally, never store Metalbite in metal or clay containers. It eats through metal and clay, and thus will eat through any containers made of them and eventually spill out. Store it only in its Machinestone canisters or in glass containers if you can get any," Rost explained with an even more serious face than before.

Eule nodded. From Rost's description, it sounded like this "Metalbite" was some kind of strong acid, and indeed, it requiring a plastic or glass container to be stored safely would fit with that assumption. Eule briefly wondered if the plastic bonded into her flesh might give her some level protection from Metalbite, but decided that the risks of testing it out on herself was too great, and so decided that wearing leather gloves on top of her normal white cloth gloves sounded like a great idea after all.

Once Rost was satisfied that he had got his point across to them, he then spread open the Strider's legs, opening up the cut he had made to allow Eule, Star, and Äloy to see further into the Strider corpse's interior. He then pointed at another "organ" within the Strider. One that was studded with what looked like Sparkers just like the ones Rost had pulled out of those Watchers on that first day.

"This is the Strider's gut. It's different from its stomach. The Strider can use this double-headed tube here–" Rost pointed at said tube just above the gut. "–to send Blaze into its gut, and somehow burn it to recharge its Sparkers."

"Hmm, a type of motor, you think?" Star asked Eule.

"It sounds like it. Maybe even similar in structure to our own motors," Eule mused. Seeing Rost and Äloy's confused expressions, she then explained: "We Replikas have a motor in our bodies that's capable of burning the biomass from the food we eat to turn into electricity, which we then store in a battery attached to the motor. The motor will automatically produce electricity until the battery is full, or until we tell it to stop to keep from potentially wasting food on electricity production when we don't need it. It's not an exact one-for-one match with what this Strider has, but it might be of a similar design."

Rost stroked his beard once more. "Eu-le, the more you explain about your people–you Replikas–the more I'm convinced that you're somehow human souls dwelling in very Machine-like bodies," he mused in turn.

Eule could only smile politely at that. For a completely wild guess, Rost had come surprisingly close to what the true nature of Replikas are.

Rost then shook his head, smiling in amusement at his own musings, before turning back to the Strider corpse. "Regardless, the guts of Striders have only a single use for us Nora: they allow us to restore dead Sparkers back to life without needing to hunt for more Machines to carve Sparkers out of. It may only be useful in this one job, but it still makes them valuable. So…"

Rost then reached into the Strider corpse, undoing the tubes connecting the gut to the rest of the Strider, pulling away thick wires that spoke of power cables, and using his knife to cut away sheets of Strider muscle before pulling the entire gut out for Eule, Star, and Äloy to look at.

Now that Eule could see it more clearly: while it had initially sounded like it was similar to a Replika's motor, it looked nothing like it. If anything, it looked more like a car's engine than the motor sitting in Eule's abdomen. Among other things, the Strider's was much larger and having no less than 8 Sparkers attached to it instead of the single battery unit attached to Eule's own motor. Rost examined the gut closely, likely looking for any damage to it, before nodding in satisfaction. Instead of stuffing the gut into Eule's backpack though, he instead walked behind Star and stuffed it into Star's backpack. Likely because he didn't want the heavy gut sitting right on top of that Metalbite canister, Eule assumed.

Rost then returned to the Strider corpse, reached back into the front of the Strider's belly right where its "chest" is, and when he pulled his hand back out, it was gripping a–

Eule stared in surprise at what looked remarkably like a computer's CPU. She'd seen something similar when she'd once watched Ara Elf take apart a malfunctioning office computer for repairs, or for salvage if it was too badly broken. The CPU her Ara friend had held up looked almost exactly like what Rost held in his hand, just with the 3-star logo of the Eusan Nation emblazoned on it instead of the strange pattern (looking like a pair of Ls wrapping around a dot) on the wafer-thin bit of electronics Rost so delicately held in his large hand.

"This is a Strider heart," Rost explained, turning it around and around so that his students could get a better look at it. "It's…not actually useful in of itself. It's only really good for making jewelry and clothing decorations out of, and that's it. Well, and the occasional hunting trophy if you like. However, because of that, merchants will usually pay a lot for intact Machine hearts. So if you do hunt a Machine and find that its heart is intact, you should carve it out and save it for trade. That said, destroying a Machine's heart is the best way to kill it, as I demonstrated with the Watchers, so don't count on it happening too often unless you're specifically aiming to obtain a Machine's heart. Still, since this Strider's heart is intact, and perfectly so from the looks of it, you might want to keep it, Äloy, since it is your kill after all. It could be useful someday," he said as he handed the Strider heart to a very excited little Gestalt girl.

Äloy stared in fascination at the CPU-like Strider heart in her hands, as though it was a rare and valuable gemstone instead of a mundane computer component, before carefully tucking it away in one of her many pouches.

Star leaned in close to Eule and whispered: "220 kHz".

When Eule dialed her REM-63 to that radio frequency, she heard Star's voice crackle: "Should we tell them that's probably just a CPU, over?"

Eule smiled at Star. "There's no point in that. Rost and the rest of the Nora probably don't even know what it is, and it wouldn't really make any difference if they did. What's the harm in it if they decide to make some jewelry out of it, over?"

Star scratched the polyethylene shell on her cheek in contemplation. "Hmm, fair enough then. Now I'm actually curious about what kind of jewelry someone can make out of a CPU, over."

Eule's smile became even wider. "Probably something very…unique, out," she teased, earning her a hug and a kiss on top of her head from her lover.

Eule caught Rost giving her and Star a smile, albeit one tinged with sadness for some odd reason, before he returned all their attentions back to the Strider corpse by pulling out every centimeter of tubing from its insides.

"Even the Striders' intestines are valuable. They make tough yet flexible pipes for transporting water and other liquids," Rost said as he gathered them up and placed them into Eule's backpack. "They also make good packing material because of their shape, making them useful for making certain that certain things like Blaze and Metalbite canisters don't break even when you handle them roughly."

Eule nodded as she noted that Rost was definitely wrapping the Strider…intestines (that gave Eule some strange and dark imaginings about those tubes) around the Metalbite canister to prevent exactly that. Fortunately, the tubes weren't that heavy despite how bulky they looked, and Eule felt that her backpack was getting just a bit heavy from the weight of all the Machine parts in it, including both the Blaze and Metalbite canisters. Still, it was a small thing to help return the favor for Rost taking her and Star in as guests, so she was more than happy to help with this without complaint.

"Now, one last thing about Strider carcasses that I want to point out are the eyes," Rost said, literally pointing at the shattered pair of robotic eyes the dead Strider had once possessed before Äloy had happened very suddenly and very violently. "Machine eyes in general are valuable because they're the only source of natural glass. Only the Carja and Oseram can make glass just as clear, and even then, it's still cheaper to hunt a Machine for its eyes. However, because targeting the eyes is also an easy way to kill Machines, indeed even easier than aiming for the heart, it's even less common for intact Machine eyes to be collected from their carcasses, making such eyes all the more valuable. A pile of shattered glass is virtually worthless unless you can take it to a glassmith, but a large undamaged lens is priceless. Which reminds me."

Rost quickly walked over to the Watcher corpse, reached down, and yanked out its intact eye before returning with it. "If you ever have need for intact Machine eyes for glass, then Watchers are the best Machines to hunt for that purpose. Their eyes are very large with a massive unbroken pane of glass, they're everywhere, and they're easy to kill even for the least skilled hunters," he explained as he placed the Watcher eye into Star's backpack.

Rost blew out a breath as he stared at the Strider corpse, now utterly devoid of any internal organs. "Alright, now that we've gutted the Strider of all its most useful parts, we can move on to cutting away the muscles, bone, and other assorted parts–"

The way Rost suddenly cut himself off and looked around alarmed Eule, and she too looked around and strained her eyes to see what caught the Gestalt man's attention. That was when Eule noticed the distant sound coming over the cliffs: the sound of someone laughing? But it sounded…wrong somehow, with Eule unable to quite put her white-gloved mechanical finger on it.

Then Eule suddenly remembered what Rost said: the sound of Machine laughing, and indeed, this sounded as though a mechanical device was somehow giggling.

"Scrappers," Rost said, confirming Eule's thoughts. "Go. Now. Back towards the house. Quickly."

Eule was more than happy to follow that command as she, Star, and Äloy quickly followed Rost back up the cliff they'd climbed down from on the way here that morning. When everyone had made it up to the top of the cliff though, Rost motioned for everyone to stop, and then pointed back down at the distant Strider and Watcher corpses, saying: "Wait and watch. You need to know what Scrappers look like, if only to know what to avoid."

Eule didn't have long to wait. From over the cliff walls on the sides, 4 of the Machines Rost called Scrappers bounded down and loped towards the Machine corpses. The Scrappers were quadrupedal, with an almost dog-like look to them that was ruined first by their hunchbacked appearance topped with a strange rotating device on their backs, next by a device on their hindquarters connected to the rest of their bodies by numerous wires, and lastly by their heads.

Each of the Scrapper's 2 eyes was made up of 4 smaller eyes, giving them a bizarrely insectoid appearance. However, their jaws took up most of Eule's attention. It consisted of a pair of massive lower jaws split in half, with each half mounting just-as-massive wheel-like devices covered in yellow-colored studs. Eule couldn't even begin to guess as to what those wheels were for, until one of the Scrappers loped up to the Strider corpse, and lowered its head to bite down on the Strider's head, with all the wheels in its lower jaw spinning until the yellow bits were a blur. Sparks flew from where the spinning wheels met the metal and plastic of the Strider's head, and the air filled with an almost painful shrieking sound of metal being cut and ground that was audible even where Eule was crouching.

On top of that, the whole time, the Scrappers were regularly making that high-pitched giggling sound, which Eule could now see was coming from them whirring the wheel-like devices on their lower jaws back and forth, making a sound that sounded eerily like a human giggling. Knowing what it was though didn't make it any less unsettling.

"They're eating our kills," Äloy quietly noted in an outraged tone that made Eule smile at her cuteness despite the situation.

Rost nodded. "That's what they and all scavenger Machines do, Aloy. Scrappers feed on dead Machines that have been laying out untended to for too long, like those carcasses we left, cutting them apart and grinding them into dust to suck in, before turning them into blocks of metal and Machinestone in their stomachs."

Star quietly whistled. "I was just joking about the Machine rats, but wow, you have Machine hyenas? That's so much worse."

Rost looked at Star with a blank face. "Hyenas? What is a hyena?"

"It's…basically those Scrappers, but if it was a purely meat and bone animal like the rabbits you hunted yesterday," Star explained. "Eule showed me a nature documentary about them once. They also ate dead animals in a place called Africa on Vineta before they went extinct."

"Hmm, I see," was all Rost had to say on that. Eule wasn't entirely clear if he understood any word of that explanation, or if he was just filing it away in his mind as "Strange Outsider Stuff".

Something was still bothering Eule though. "How did those Scrappers know those Machine carcasses were here in the first place? They clearly couldn't have seen them from how far away they were," she asked Rost.

Rost pointed at the closest Scrapper, which was in the process of grinding the dead Watcher's eyeless head. "See that device on its back? It's some kind of…scanning device that it uses to locate Machine carcasses out of its sight. I couldn't even begin to tell you how it works, but I do know that it can detect large amounts of metal from a fair distance beyond its sight range."

Eule stiffened up upon hearing that, as did Star.

"How far can they detect metal? As far as here?" Star asked in a worried tone.

Rost waved a calming hand. "Don't worry. The Scrappers will only go for the large amounts of metal normally found on a Machine carcass, and that scanning device seems to have trouble detecting metal inside non-metal containers. The parts we've salvaged shouldn't be enough to draw their attention."

"Uhh, Rost? We haven't told you this yet before, and I think we should: we Replikas have steel skeletons," Eule said nervously. "Our bones are a type of carbon steel that we maintain by eating dietary iron and small amounts of various minerals, and we have more or less identical skeletal design to Gestalts like you and Äloy. Could these Scrappers detect our skeletons from here?"

Rost frowned slightly as he thought. Eule wasn't certain whether it was from the revelation of her and Star having carbon steel skeletons, or from what it meant in regards to the Scrappers. Fortunately though, Eule didn't need to worry about Äloy having any existential angst about her carbon steel bones. Not from the intensely excited look the curious little Gestalt girl was giving her and Star.

"I'm…not sure, to be honest. Not without knowing if your skin and flesh can cause trouble for the Scrappers' scanning devices like leather can," Rost admitted. "On top of that, I've never seen nor heard of Scrappers going after living Machines in my life, so even if it detects you and Shtar from this distance, you two should be safe." Despite those words though, he still gave a worried look at the distant Scrappers below, and then sighed. "Still, let's head home now. Better to be safe than sorry, especially where Scrapper packs are concerned."

Eule sighed in relief, and was more than happy to follow Rost with Star next to her as he got up and started retracing their path back to his and Äloy's house, leaving the still-giggling and snarling Scrappers to their macabre feast.

"Oh, one last thing about Scrappers you should be wary of," Rost added to Eule as he walked, and to Star as well judging from his glance at her. "Their scanning devices can somehow see through foxtail grass at close ranges. Thus, you can't expect to hide from them in foxtails as you would for normal Machines. You either need to kill the Scrapper quickly before it gets too close, or shoot off its scanning device and then kill it when it comes to investigate where the arrow that robbed it of its far-sight came from."

Eule shuddered. As if the Scrappers weren't bad enough already, she thought.

"I hate those Scrappers too, Eu-le," Äloy announced.

Eule looked down at Äloy with a smile. "Oh? Was I that obvious?"

Äloy nodded. "Yeah, you were making a 'I really hate Scrappers' face back there."

Eule cocked her head as she thought about it. "I think 'hate' is a bit strong for what I feel about Scrappers right now, but they are a bit…unsettling. Especially because of that giggling sound they make."

Äloy nodded even more vehemently. "I know, right? This is the first time I've seen and heard Scrappers, and I already think they're creepy too. That's why I hate them."

Eule only smiled at Äloy in response. She could already tell that the very strong-willed little Gestalt girl was only going to become a very strong-willed Gestalt woman when she grows up.

Fortunately, the journey back to Rost's and Äloy's was almost as uneventful as that initial trip to their Machine carcasses. Almost.

Just as they started to reenter the main area of the Embrace and was about to start up the long, winding mountain path to get back to Rost's and Äloy's house, Eule noticed a very strange sight: a group of Nora children standing on a low hill overlooking the path, all staring at a young blonde Nora boy about Äloy's age, who Eule recognized as one of the children from yesterday who was with those Nora women. Said boy though had his hands behind his back, and was trying very hard to look innocent. So hard in fact that Eule was amused that he was obviously trying to hide something. Well, children will be children, she thought.

"Umm, Eu-le? Can I ask you something?" Äloy asked from her side.

Eule turned away from the Nora children to look down at Äloy. "Yes?"

"Well, it's something I've been thinking about for a while now, and it's been bugging me."

"Mm-hmm?" asked Eule, curious as to what Äloy had thought of now.

"…How is your hat staying on?" Seeing Eule's blank expression, Äloy continued. "I've seen you bend over, crouch, and do things that should make your hat fall off, but it doesn't. So how is it–hey, you're laughing at me again!"

"No, I mean, yes, but, I'm sorry," Eule said, trying unsuccessfully to hold back her giggles. "It's not you I'm laughing at, it's the situation. Here, let me show you."

Eule gripped her favorite side cap by its base, and carefully pulled upwards, making her hat come off with a plonk sound. She then leaned down and handed her hat over to Äloy. "Do you see the base of the brim on the underside there?" she asked.

Eule watched Äloy turn her hat over and looked at it. "It's…metal?"

Eule nodded. "It's actually a magnetic strip of iron running along the brim there. You know how I said our skeletons are carbon steel? Well, that magnetic strip lets it stick to my skull, keeping it on even under circumstances when it would've just fallen off."

Äloy tilted her head at Eule. "Magnetic?"

Eule tried to think of an answer for Äloy that would make sense to her. It was while she was thinking about that when suddenly, something hit her in the back, just under a spot between her shoulders. It was where her polyethylene shell was at some of its thickest though, so it didn't really hurt. The impact made her stumble a bit and yelp, but that was it. She heard the sound of something clattering behind her though, and looked back to see a rock bouncing off the ground. She quickly realized that someone had just thrown a rock at her, and looked around.

Eule quickly saw the blonde Nora boy from earlier. He'd apparently been following them along with that gaggle of children, and was just standing there pale and frozen, with another rock in his left hand, and very clearly the culprit. Eule just stared at him, blinking in confusion. She had no idea what she'd done to offend the boy enough for him to throw a rock at her, especially since this was the second time she'd ever seen him, so she was more bewildered than angry.

Star however, definitely sounded angry. "Hey, what's the big idea?!" she yelled angrily at the young Nora boy.

Before Eule could try to calm Star down though, the young Nora boy had apparently had enough. He immediately dropped his other rock, turned tail, and fled deeper into the Embrace. The other children stood there staring in shock at their fellow child before looking back at Eule and especially Star, and then fleeing with the young Nora boy.

All except for a young blonde Gestalt girl about the same age as Äloy. She stood there, seemingly frozen in place, looking back and forth between Eule, Star, Äloy, and Rost in rapid succession before her frightened gaze settled on Eule.

"I, I…I'm sorry," the young blonde girl stammered. "Bast, he…he was b-being mean, an-and…I didn't stop him," she finally finished quietly.

Eule looked at the girl in sympathy. "It's okay. You don't need to apologize. You didn't throw that rock," she consoled.

"But…but I didn't stop him. I didn't…I didn't even try!" the young blonde girl protested, looking like she was on the verge of tears.

"You didn't throw the rock, that Bast boy did," Eule insisted firmly, before her gaze softened towards the young blonde girl. "And it's okay. At least you were brave enough to stay and explain. You don't need to apologize for that Bast boy."

"Yeah, that's right," Star piped up. "You don't need to apologize for someone who was too chicken to own up to what he did. I mean, seriously, did you see him run off as soon as we saw what he did? I think there are Striders who can't run that fast. Pretty soon, he'll probably be fast enough for everyone to see how quickly he can run away from anything that even so much as makes him jump."

The young blonde girl stared at Star with wide eyes, before breaking out into giggles. Eule felt her heart lighten at that. This girl really shouldn't feel like she has to apologize for anything anyone else did, let alone this Bast boy.

"Minali! Where are you! We have berries that need picking over here!" a woman shouted.

"Coming, mother!" the young blonde girl who Eule now knew was named Minali replied. She gave one last worried look at Eule.

Eule merely gave her a friendly wave and a smile, showing that she was alright.

Minali gave a shy smile and an even shyer wave back before running off towards where the other children ran off to.

"Are you really okay?" Star immediately asked Eule as soon as Minali had left, checking behind her for any injuries.

"Yes, I'm fine, Star," Eule said with a smile to show that she was indeed fine. "It didn't even hurt. I don't think there's even a scuffle on my uniform, let alone on my shell."

"Eh, just a little mark on your uniform's back, but you can only see it if you're looking closely," Star said after a few moments of searching for it. "Still, what the fuck was that all about?"

Rost stared after the fleeing children with a slight frown on his face. "I'm not certain, but…it's possible that he had thrown that rock at you because you were different? That Bast boy would have to have been very foolish or very ill-mannered to do that to an adult though. I would think his mother would at least teach him to be polite to adults, especially to outsiders," he said with a disappointed tone.

Eule frowned as well as she stared in the direction of where that young Nora boy and the rest of the Gestalt children had fled to. "I suppose some children can be quite foolish, cruel, or maybe even both," she said shaking her head, before turning back to Äloy. "Well, let's just ignore that for now and head ba– Äloy? What's wrong?"

It was only now that Eule noticed that Äloy was looking a bit pale herself, and was even rubbing Eule's favorite cap in a very worried gesture.

"I…I think he'd meant to throw that rock at me," Äloy finally said, looking up at Eule with worried green eyes. "That spot where you were hit…it was right in the way of my head, and that boy was looking right at me when I turned around to see him. I think…he just threw his rock wrong."

Eule now looked back at where the boy had fled to in alarm before returning her gaze to Äloy in even more alarm. "But why? You only just saw him yesterday. Why would he–" Eule suddenly cut herself off as she remembered her own words from just a moment ago. "Oh," was all she could say now.

In her mind's eye, Eule could see the rock fly into little Äloy's head had she not been there to block it. Her medical training gave her a disturbingly detailed idea of what would've happened. The sharpened edges of that rock would've gashed Äloy's skin and flesh there, causing substantial bleeding and certainly a lot of pain, in addition to likely leaving a permanent scar. She also knew that the skulls of children were softer than that of adults, so depending on how fast Bast threw that rock, he could've even fractured Äloy's skull. Maybe even kill Äloy if things went horribly wrong.

Eule immediately crouched down and pulled the little Gestalt girl into a hug, both to comfort Äloy and to comfort herself at her own imaginings. "It's okay. Don't worry. He didn't harm me and he didn't harm you, so it's fine," she insisted with the rhythm of a mantra.

"But he could've hurt you. Hurt you bad," Äloy said from within Eule's hug, her voice muffled.

Eule eventually released Äloy from her hug to look her in the eye. "Not me, not with that rock, and certainly not with his little Gestalt arms, even to a Eule like myself. Here, knock on my head." Seeing Äloy's bewildered and uncertain expression, Eule insisted: "Go on, really. Knock on my head like you're knocking on a door. Hard."

Äloy tentatively raised a little fist, and did so. Eule watched Äloy's eyes widen in fascination as a clanging sound emanated from where Äloy knocked on Eule's carbon steel skull, and Eule was happy to see Äloy's misery and worry melt away into fascinated curiosity.

"It really is made of steel," Äloy breathed.

Eule nodded happily. "Yes, it is. So trust me when I say that rock couldn't have possibly injured me coming from that boy, and there's no way I'm going to just stand there and let him hit you with it. So you don't have to worry about him hitting me again, or him trying to hit you again."

"You know, I'm a pretty decent shot with my revolver," Star said in a wondering tone. "Maybe if that kid tries to pull something like that again, I could–"

"Staaar. Don't you dare contemplate trying to shoot a child," Eule turned to her lover to say in a warning tone, giving her a most unamused face in the process.

Star waved her hands in negation. "I wasn't! Really! I was just going to suggest that maybe I grab a rock myself and use it to knock the rock out of his hand. All martial arts-like, you know?" Seeing Eule still continue to give her an unamused look, Star gave a sheepish grin and finally said: "Yeah, alright. No throwing rocks at kids too," earning a satisfied nod from Eule.

"I think that's a great idea though," Äloy piped up, before quickly adding once she saw Eule turn her unamused look towards her: "The throwing rock at that boy's rock part, not the shooting part."

"Äloy," Eule began, gently placing her hands on Äloy's shoulders and giving the little Gestalt girl a most polite and serene smile. "Star is being a bad role model right now. Please disregard what she just said."

Star could only give a sheepish laugh in reply to that, while Äloy simply gave an uncharacteristically meek nod before holding out Eule's favorite cap.

"Here's your hat back, Eu-le. Maybe you'll feel better with it back? Like with me and my scarf?" Äloy asked hopefully.

Eule smiled and gratefully accepted her side cap back with a "Thank you," before walking over to the nearby river to check her reflection, carefully moving it over the exact spot where she wanted her cap on her head and just as carefully placing it down. She felt a deep satisfaction at feeling her cap stick back onto her head with a miniscule tunk in exactly the same place as it was before she took it off.

"Better now?" Äloy asked again as Eule turned around back to her.

Eule nodded vehemently. "Much better," she replied with a genuine smile.

Äloy's reply to that was her own bright grin. "Yes!" she cheered before taking Eule by one of her white-gloved hands and gently pulling her ahead. "Come on, there's dinner waiting back home once Rost cooks it! You and Star will feel even better once you eat it!"

Eule giggled. "I'll feel even better than that if Rost will just let me help with it this time."

Rost, who'd been watching the scene with a worried expression that then melted into a relaxed and amused one, now looked at Eule with a look that spoke of an amused exasperation. "Honestly, I find it puzzling that you would constantly ask to help with cooking, Eu-le. Most people would be ecstatic to have someone cook for them after a long day," he said, shaking his head with a slight smile on his face.

Eule merely gave him a sunny smile in turn. "Most people who don't enjoy cooking, perhaps. As a Eule who worked in the kitchens of S-23 Sierpinski and thoroughly enjoyed it, I'm not one of those people."

Rost stroked his beard thoughtfully upon hearing that. "Perhaps, but–"

The sudden way Rost suddenly cut himself off again put Eule on edge once more, fearing that another Machine had somehow snuck up on them. So Eule was puzzled when Rost put a finger to his mouth and shushed her to be quiet before gently stabbing his spear into the ground, and drawing his bow at something off to Eule's side.

Eule slowly turned to look in the direction of where Rost was aiming his bow, and was surprised to see something that wasn't a Machine. Instead, a large bird whose head reached all the way up to her hips was ambling along several meters away from them, oblivious to their presence and making a gentle clucking sound as it walked. It was covered in dark brown, almost black, feathers mottled with black and white, trailed a decently long feathery tail behind it, and had an almost naked pink, blue-faced head decorated with a distinctly pink bit of flesh on its neck that looked very familiar to Eule, but she couldn't quite put her robotic finger on it.

Eule wasn't surprised when there was the twang of a bowstring, and an arrow suddenly buried itself into the bird's head right through its eye, killing it instantly and also causing a pair of slightly smaller and lighter brown birds to take flight in a flurry of feathers and panicked gobbling sounds. Rost had drawn his bow for a reason after all, and honestly, what with needing to feed himself, Äloy, Eule, and a very calorie-demanding Star; Eule got the feeling that Rost needed to hunt as much game as he could.

Rost walked over to the bird, pulled the arrow out of its head before wiping it off and putting it back into its quiver, hefted the bird by its feet, and brought it back with a satisfied look on his face. "Well, it seems that we shall be feasting on turkey tonight. Likely tomorrow as well, and possibly the day after too" he declared.

"Oh, yes, that's it!" Eule said excitedly as Rost's words suddenly reminded her of pictures she'd seen of what turkeys looked like pre-slaughter. "It's a bit slimmer than the pictures I've seen of turkeys at farms, but that's definitely a male turkey."

Rost raised an eyebrow at Eule. "Huh, so your tribe raises animals for food then? I suppose that makes this 'Eusan Nation' you mentioned last night similar to the Carja and Oseram in that regard," he remarked as he took out his knife and cut the turkey's ruined head off, letting the blood drain out in a fashion Eule still found a bit macabre, even though she knew how necessary it was to cool an animal carcass down after she'd listened to Rost explain why he did the same thing to the rabbits he hunted yesterday. "We Nora choose to live off of All-Mother's bounty rather than try to take more than what we need through things like animal-raising and farming plants. The Banuk are like us in that regard, save for them raising goats for milk, meat, and furs. You could almost call them slightly profane Nora for that," he mused.

As Eule nodded in fascination at this morsel of information about the world outside the Nora, she heard the distinct sound of Äloy hopping in excitement.

"Are you ever going to tell me more about those other tribes you keep talking about?" the curious little Gestalt girl whined.

Eule watched Rost sigh as he shook the turkey to get as much of the blood out of it as possible. "Maybe later, Aloy. For now, I think it's time to head home to cook this turkey. After I gut it first, of course."

With that said, Rost then laid the turkey down onto a flat-ish patch of stony ground, and began gutting it. Eule watched in intense fascination as Rost took his knife, almost gently cut into an area right below the turkey's breast, and then severed the feather-covered skin in a line from that point down to the turkey's anus. With that done, he then gripped the edges of the cut and pulled the skin open, putting the internal organs on full display before he carefully reached in and just as carefully pulled them all out, skillfully using his knife to sever their connections to the turkey's interior.

Rost dumped the stomach and intestines unceremoniously onto the dirt as waste, covering it up with more dirt to avoid creating a mess. Everything else though, including the heart, liver, kidneys, gizzard, and even the lungs; he put into a large leather satchel with double walls, with the satchel's exterior constantly coated in a thin layer of frost. Rost had explained the concept of a Chillwater container to Eule yesterday when he put the rabbit offal into it, but Eule still found it just as fascinating right now. A container within a larger container, with a coolant called Chillwater harvested from certain Machines poured into the gap in between the containers? Eule thought it was an ingenious way to have a cooler in a society that couldn't build their own in the usual way, and indeed, she was determined to one day possess one of these Chillwater containers, even knowing that she would have to regularly replace the Chillwater as it evaporated.

Speaking of Chillwater, once Rost had redone the latch on his offal-filled Chillwater satchel, Eule watched Rost then take a small frost-covered leather bag filled with Chillwater, and put it into the turkey's body cavity where its internal organs had previously resided. Rost had stressed the need to cool a hunted animal's carcass as fast as possible to keep it from spoiling yesterday as Eule had watched him gut the rabbit carcasses, so Eule figured that the Chillwater bag was meant to fulfill the same purpose for this turkey carcass.

Thus, with the turkey now properly prepared for the trip, Rost stood back up, holding it by its feet, and finally announced that it was time to go home. Even in spite of the long, meandering mountain road (or rather, dirt path) they took to get back up there; Eule still felt like Rost and Äloy's house was becoming more and more like home with each passing day.

---

As Rost promised: dinner that night was indeed turkey. Specifically: grilled turkey that Rost dry-rubbed with the chili-based spice mix he and Äloy seemed to love so much. Indeed, Rost made sure to cover every square centimeter of one of the turkey breast, wings, and thighs with that spice mix before roasting them outside on a metal griddle over a fire pit. Rost had explained that the circular flat plate of black, forged steel standing on 4 steel legs (all of adjustable height) and fitted with wood-covered handles for gripping was yet another Oseram tool he'd traded for some time ago, making Eule genuinely curious as to what these Oseram people were like to be able to make that, but for now, dinner was the most pressing thing on Eule's mind.

Especially since for the first time, Rost was actually letting Eule help him cook! Mostly because Rost was cooking both an offal stew using the house's fireplace, while simultaneously trying to grill the turkey outside. It was proving to be…challenging for Rost to keep moving in and out of the house to keep watch on both dishes, so Rost had finally conceded and allowed Eule to prepare the offal stew. It wasn't that hard a job really. All she was really doing was stirring the stew to keep the stew from burning (mostly in the form of keeping the rice at the bottom from burning into a soggy, charcoal-flavored imitation of a rice cracker, as rice is wont to do in congee if you're not careful), but it was still nice, relaxing cooking.

Indeed, she felt like she was cooking under Februar's supervision once more in S-23 Sierpinski before everything happened. She could almost imagine EULR-S2302 giving her work a quick glance over her shoulder before giving an approving nod and moving off to either do her own kitchen work or check on another of her sisters. It was actually rather comforting to imagine that scenario as she stirred the offal stew.

"You look really happy, Eu-le," Äloy asked with a curiously tilted head. "Do you really like cooking that much?"

Eule nodded with a delighted grin plastered all over her face. "It's one of the duties we Eule were made for, although truth be told, I just love cooking. It's so much fun to create delicious foods and watching everyone enjoy your cooking."

"Really? I think cooking is boring," Äloy said with the blithe bluntness only a child her age could muster.

"Really?" Eule echoed with a curious smile. "Why is that?"

"All you're doing is just putting stuff together for some time on a fire until it's done. There's nothing fun about that. Not like shooting an arrow or climbing up a cliff or anything brave like that," the little Gestalt girl listed.

Eule gave a nervous laugh. It was a simplistic description of cooking that completely ignored all the intricacies and details of the culinary arts, but then again, Äloy was only a young child. Maybe she would change her tune a bit when she grew up?

Star surprised Eule though by tsk-tsking and wagging her black robotic finger at Äloy. "Äloy, Äloy. You're forgetting about something very important here: without people who are passionate about cooking like my Eule and your Rost, we wouldn't have delicious food in the world!" she declared with, coincidentally, pure passion.

Äloy adopted a shocked face, which was followed immediately by a look of chastisement. "Yeah, you're right," she admitted, before immediately following that with: "But I still think cooking is boring though."

Eule sighed. Maybe Äloy wouldn't be interested in cooking after all, she thought.

Fortunately, Rost saved the day when he walked, or rather sidled, in carrying a metal griddle crammed full of steaming grilled turkey. "Turkey is ready," he proudly announced.

Eule took a long-handled wooden spoon she was using as a tasting spoon and tasted the stew. "Stew is ready too," she just as proudly announced.

Rost set down the turkey-laden griddle right next to the dinner table and placed a massive turkey breast, a section of thigh, and a wing on a serving tray onto said dinner table along with a knife for carving the meat before walking over to the pot full of stew to take a look and then a sniff. "Hmm, looks done and smells done too. Perfectly, in fact. Thank you, Eu-le."

Eule beamed at him with the cheerful joy of a noonday sun. "You're more than welcome!" she replied happily.

With that concluded, their diner for the night began. Indeed, Rost's spiced roasted turkey was flavorful and tender, and the offal stew was just as delicious thanks to Eule's small contribution to it. Eule hoped that after this, Rost might even let her cook her own dish for everyone.

It was while enjoying this delicious dinner though that the most unexpected thing Eule had ever experienced thus far in this world happened: a knock at the front door. Of Rost and Äloy's house, who are both outcasts and who also happened to be living a good ways up the side of a mountain.

"Expecting anyone else for dinner, Rost?" Star asked with a raised eyebrow as she stared at said front door.

"No, I'm not," Rost said with a look on his face that mixed bewilderment and worry.

Eule's own worry only grew when Rost silently got up from his chair and walked over to where his spear was resting against the wall to take it. Seeing that also made Star just as worried, for she also quietly stood up and got in front of Eule, drawing her revolver from its belt holster, but keeping its muzzle pointed at the floor…for now.

Eule now also stood up in alarm, and then suddenly felt a small impact at the back of her hip. She looked back and downwards to see Äloy hiding behind her, staring at the front door in surprise and more than a little alarm herself. Eule gently pat Äloy on her head before turning her attention back to the front door, and just in time too, for Rost reached down to the door handle, and pushed it open to reveal–

An elderly Gestalt woman. Even if the wrinkles around the woman's smiling face didn't clue Eule in, the woman's long white hair tied into numerous long, hanging braids and decorated with strips of blue cloth would've made the woman's age obvious. The elderly woman was otherwise dressed in the style Eule had come to associate with the Nora, with clothes made of animal skins decorated with patterns made mostly of blue threads or wires woven into the skins. The only thing notable about the elderly woman was a small headdress on top of her head, seemingly made out of a combination of Machine parts and wooden decorations on either side of it that resembled a pair of downward-pointing horns.

It was the elderly woman's smile and her complete and utter lack of any weapons that disarmed Eule and made her relax. The elderly woman only held a wooden stick carved into a spiraling pattern, with the blue wire and red feather decorations on it making it obvious that it was only a walking stick and nothing more. Even aside from her smile, the elderly woman had a merry look in her eyes, as though she was thinking about some joke only she knew about. There was something about that expression that further relaxed Eule, at least partially because that expression reminded her of the eldest Eule sister: dear EULR-S2301 "Januar".

"Hello, Ro–" the elderly woman began.

Unfortunately, she only got that far before Eule watched in surprise and amazement as Rost instantly fell to his knees, lowering his gaze to the floor.

"No, no, no, off your knees," the elderly woman said insistently. "No one should ever have to kneel to someone in their own home. Least of all you, Rost."

Rost did indeed get up at the elderly woman's command, albeit hesitantly, but now just stood there staring at her.

"Rost, while you may indeed speak to me, I believe your memory might be starting to go. Because I seem to recall giving you my eternal permission to speak to me whenever you want. Repeatedly," the elderly woman quipped with an exasperated and wry smile.

"With all due respect, I do remember that quite clearly, and I still don't believe that's possible according to tribal law," Rost replied at last.

"Hah!" the elderly woman laughed, looking directly at Eule as she pointed a thumb at Rost and said: "He's a stubborn one, eh? All-Mother knows he's a caring sort, but he has a few points where he's as inflexible as a mountain."

Eule scoffed in amusement. "Indeed. A very soft mountain, but a mountain nonetheless."

The elderly woman laughed in reply to that, and thus Eule could feel the tension in the room, which had already been draining since the elderly woman opened her mouth, evaporate completely.

Rost stood aside and beckoned the elderly woman in. "Won't you come in? We're just having dinner, and we would be honored if you would join us."

The elderly woman beamed at him in reply. "Normally, I would be telling myself off for just casually sauntering up to someone's house, uninvited no less, and getting myself invited to someone's dinner. However, I do admit, Rost, that I have a weakness for your cooking. It's been years since I sampled any of it, and you are a most wonderful cook. So yes, thank you dearly for your offer, and for letting me rest my bones in front of your cozy fire as well."

As the elderly woman walked in, Rost closed the door and turned into the most gracious host imaginable. Even more so than usual for him. He hurriedly grabbed an extra chair, as well as an extra bowl from upstairs, and set an extra place at the dinner table for the elderly woman. All in less than a minute too, according to Eule's internal clock.

Eule then noticed Star staring at the elderly woman with a befuddled expression, her revolver now completely aimed straight down and nowhere near the woman. "So does this mean you're not here to cause trouble?" Star asked, scratching her head with her free hand.

The elderly woman turned a rather mischievous smile at Star. "Well, it depend on what you mean by 'trouble'. But if you mean the kind of trouble that might bring harm to you two, Rost, or Aloy; then I can assure that I have absolutely no intention of doing that. I'm far more interested in doing harm to Rost's cooking there."

Star smiled at that. "Yeah, I second that motion. Probably third it as well, given how much I eat," she joked as she finally returned her revolver to her holster, redoing the latch on it as a sign of how little threat she saw the elderly woman posing.

The elderly woman laughed at the joke, although Eule did notice her giving a curious look at Star's revolver before shrugging and taking a seat at Rost's offered place at the dinner table. Star walked over to take her own seat at the same time Eule did, although Eule did notice that Äloy was still hiding behind her. Well, partially. The little Gestalt girl was most definitely no longer afraid, and was now extremely curious about this strange visitor to her and Rost's house. Indeed, Eule was amused to see that Äloy had actually dragged her chair between Eule and Star, had planted her wooden bowl and Machine hide plate between the 2 Replikas as well, and was now staring intensely at the elderly woman.

Meanwhile, Rost had served up a bowl of turkey offal stew and several slices of the spiced turkey breast to the elderly woman, who proceeded to take out a very small knife from her sleeve, gently speared a slice of turkey breast, and took a delicate bite out of it. The appreciative sounds coming from her chewing mouth told Eule all she needed to know about what the elderly woman thought of Rost's cooking.

"I have to admit," the elderly woman said once she had swallowed. "I didn't know what to think of this 'chili' the Carja brought to us when we first started trading with them. I thought the idea of a spice that almost literally made your mouth burn was a bit daft. But now, after eating foods spiced with chili for quite some time now, I believe I've developed just as much a taste for them as you have, Rost."

Rost nodded in reply. "I also admit that I thought the same myself when I first tasted chili. Now though, I find that I cannot live without a pinch of it in my food at least semi-regularly."

The elderly woman laughed. "Honestly, I don't know how the Carja trade mission manages to keep you supplied with chili and somehow still manage to have some left for the rest of the Nora."

Rost himself chuckled in reply before his expression grew a bit more pensive. "As much of an honor this is, may I ask why you are here? Because I doubt that you came here solely to enjoy my cooking," he asked.

The elderly woman grew a bit more serious as well as she nodded. "As much as I would've liked that to be the case, I'm afraid I did come here on a mission. A fact-finding mission, if you will. One that involves your guests," she explained, now looking directly at Eule and her Star.

Eule smiled politely at the elderly woman. "We would be happy to explain ourselves if it proves that we are no danger to you…pardon me, but I seem to be at a disadvantage here. May I ask for your name, Frau…?"

The elderly woman tilted her head at Eule's last word, and then replied: "You may call me Teersa, child. I have a title, but I'll just leave it for the sake of brevity."

Judging by the semi-outraged gagging noises Rost was making, it seemed that whatever this "title" of Teersa's was, it was something that was probably a lot more important than what Teersa was making it out to be. Still, if Teersa wanted to leave it at that, then that was fine with Eule.

"Frau Teersa, it's an honor to meet you," Eule began. "My name is EULR-S2324, but you may call me 'Eule' for short. My, well, you would call her my mate here is…"

Star waved in a friendly manner at Teersa. "Name's STAR-S2325, but like Eule, you can call me 'Star' for short," she said merrily.

Teersa rubbed her chin in contemplation. "Such strange names, and your 'for short' names are in some ways just as odd…and hard to pronounce as well. Aula and Shtar? Am I pronouncing that correctly?" she asked.

Eule smiled politely at that. "It's close enough. To be fair, Rost and Äloy still have problems trying to pronounce them."

"Wait, even for Shtar?" Äloy suddenly piped up, looking pointedly at the Star in question.

"Uhhh," went Star as she avoided looking Äloy in the eye.

Äloy gave Star a look so adorably unamused that it made Eule giggle.

"I was trying to not make you feel bad, and it was close enough for government work anyways," Star said with a sheepish grin.

Äloy replied to that with a groaning sound that screamed un-amusement. "You're like Eu-le when you do that," she noted, still having an expression on her face that was somewhere between a frown and a pout.

Star's reaction was, surprisingly, to give Äloy a goofy grin. "Eh-heh, so I'm just like Eule, eh?"

"No! It's a bad thing when it's like that! Stop looking so happy!" Äloy protested, but to no avail against Star's joy at hearing someone compare her to her love.

Eule couldn't help but laugh at what was going on, and she was quite relieved to hear Teersa laughing as well.

"Amazing. Such a short time, and she already treats you two like you're family," Teersa noted, still laughing before her expression settled into a soft but sad one. "It's really too bad you're outsiders, and outsiders who've caused quite a commotion on top of it. Honestly, I don't know if everyone is more afraid or excited at what's been happening."

Eule cocked her head at Teersa. "Commotion? What do you mean?"

Teersa gave a wry smile at Eule. "Well, let me start at the beginning. 2 days ago, there was the same omen that preceded the Derangement: the sound of thunder that didn't sound quite like thunder on a clear day, with not a thundercloud in sight. Only, this time there were 2 such sounds, and they were much quieter than the Thunderous Omen. Still, no one knew what caused it, and without any explanation, the strangest of rumors and the wildest of stories spread like wildfire.

"Then the day after that, some mothers out gathering with their children gossiped with everyone about encountering a pair of outsiders that no one had ever seen before. Their descriptions of the outsiders were strange even for outsiders: a pair of black-haired, blue-eyed women with strange black decorations on their faces, shiny like glass or Machinestone and wearing the strangest clothes anyone had ever seen, with one of them–who was mentioned to be incredibly tall as well–wearing equally as strange armor on top of her clothes. The mothers mentioned that the outsider women walked oddly, as though their legs had an extra joint to them. A mother who got a close look at them even mentioned that she thought the outsider women's pupils were red, as though they were Deranged Machines, but the outsider women behaved normally and even politely, so she dismissed it as a trick of the light.

"But the thing that caught my attention was that mother mentioning that the outsider women were with the young outcast girl. As far as I know, Aloy is the only one in all of Nora history who was ever made an outcast that young. Even before the mother mentioned one of the outsider women talking about Rost, I knew that you two were somehow involved with Rost and Aloy. I kept that bit to myself at the time though, because the Braves were getting excited about it, and not in a good way. A pair of outsider women sneaking all the way into the Embrace without them noticing? That's not a good thing, as far as they're concerned. Fortunately, they decided that since the outsider women were nothing but pleasantly polite to the mothers, that the outsider women were no threat for now, and that they would just watch and wait for anything that might tell them otherwise.

"Then just a couple of hours ago, I hear from a rather angry Brave that he saw the outsider women everyone has been talking about, and that they were 'conspiring' with outcasts, including the outcast girl, to do…something. He wasn't particularly clear about that, but he insisted that the outsider women were out to harm the tribe, and that we should drive them out or kill them before it's too late. Well, fortunately, no one took this particular Brave seriously about anything except him seeing the outsider women, so at the very least, I wasn't worried about a mob forming.

"Still, with everyone getting so excited about these outsider women, I figured that if everyone has been seeing them with Rost and Aloy so many times, then it's fairly likely that I'll find them where Rost's house is, since no one has seen them walking about in the night.

"So, here I am. Perhaps you and Shtar might to enlighten an old woman about what's been happening?" Teersa finished, with that wry smile of amusement never leaving her face the entire time.

Eule took a deep breath to prepare her thoughts, and then explained: "To answer the question of the thunder on a clear day, yes, we were the cause of that. Star had to shoot some Watchers that were attacking us, and the thunder you heard was the sound of her revolver firing."

This time, it was Teersa's turn to cock her head at Eule. "Revolver? It take it that was the strange object your Star was holding earlier?"

Star, who had stopped grinning like a loon sometime early on in Teersa's story, replied by instantly pulling out her revolver to show to Teersa. "Yeah, this is it. My Einhorn revolver packs a punch, but it also packs an earful that does sound like thunder if you've never heard a gunshot before."

Teersa peered curiously at the large yet stubby revolver Star held out for her to look at. "How curious. Such a small weapon, but then again, even a simple knife can be deadly in the hands of a good enough Brave. Still, it's good to know that it wasn't an omen of another Derangement, although frankly, I have trouble imagining what could be worse than the Derangement already," she chuckled as she joked.

Eule merely kept a polite smile. For all that this Derangement created such a danger, she thought Rost had been right yesterday. If the Derangement were to somehow spread to humans like the bizarre corruption that spread through S-23 Sierpinski, it would be so much worse than what it was like now.

"Now with that riddle solved, I'm honestly curious now, Aula. How did you and your mate get into the Embrace without anyone seeing you, anyways?" Teersa asked curiously. "Did you sneak through the patrols like what the Braves think, or did the both of you just fall from the sky?" she joked.

Eule looked at Star, who was also looking at her in turn, before looking back at Teersa.

Teersa promptly ceased her chuckling. "That was a joke, dear…or did I somehow hit closer to the truth than I thought?"

Eule grimaced before replying: "You're not exactly right about that…but it's not that far from the truth either. Let me explain our story, Star and I, and you might want to make yourself comfortable for this, because it will take some time."

Teersa merely repositioned herself a bit more comfortably on her chair. "I'll give you and Shtar as much time as you need, Aula. It sounds like it will be quite the tale," she said with a comforting smile.

Eule gave back her own smile, even if it was a bit wan. "Unfortunately, while it will be a long tale, it's not one that you'll probably find entertaining," she began before she and her lover launched into the tale of S-23 Sierpinski and the dark story that occurred within the already dark story of that forced labor colony.

As they continued to eat dinner all the while, Eule watched as Teersa's smile slowly slipped from her face to be replaced by surprise, amazement, and then an almost perpetual look of deep thought. Honestly, Eule herself was surprised that Teersa didn't break out into a complete denial of Eule's and Star's story mid-telling, because to any of the Nora, the Replikas' tale of a strange sickness that killed any Gestalt it infected and turned the Replikas into maddened, bloodthirsty monsters must sound more like a horrific fantasy than anything that could happen in real life. Especially since by all accounts, Replikas didn't even seem to exist in this world.

Indeed, Eule had stopped in the middle of recounting what happened when Star found her and the other survivors in their group to make sure that Äloy hadn't been re-traumatized by the story's repetition. To her relief, the little Gestalt girl had shaken her head and insisted that hearing the story again wasn't so bad this time, so she was fine.

Eule also tried to make sure Rost was okay, but he had simply waved it off and insisted that Eule continue. For once, Eule couldn't decide if he was actually okay or if he was stubbornly toughing it out. He seemed to have realized by now that she was very good at reading body language, and so had practically frozen himself in place. Eule grimaced at Rost for this, but there was nothing she could do about it, so she merely continued her tale all the way to the end.

By the time Eule and Star reached that end (as well as finished Rost's lovely dinner, which Eule thought helped keep her stress levels down during this retelling), Teersa had closed her eyes, still with a deeply thoughtful expression.

"I see now that you and your mate have had a very difficult journey to get here, even though you know not how you did so," Teersa said at last.

Eule nodded. "Honestly, I'm surprised you, Rost, and Äloy believed our story so easily. I think if I was in your positions, I would have a hard time believing us since, well, our story probably sounds incredibly fantastical to you, doesn't it?"

Teersa's initial reply was a wry smile. "I would think if you two were going to lie to me about your story, you would at least have the sense to come up with something remotely believable. The only reasons why you would give me such a tale is because you two are either amazing storytellers–and honestly, I would think that to be wonderfully entertaining–or it's the truth no matter how unbelievable it is. And neither of you strike me as Gratas, so I'll have to assume that you two are indeed telling me the truth." She then shook her head, still with that smile on her face. "Honestly though, I'm not sure which part of your story is more 'fantastical', as you put it: the fact that you two just suddenly found yourself in the Embrace with no idea how you got here, or the fact that you two are apparently some sort of half-Machine women," she mused.

"So you're not bothered by that either? Us being 'half-Machine women', I mean?" Star asked, rubbing the back of her head as she did so, Eule saw.

Teersa rubbed her chin in thought for a moment. "I would say that makes you two certainly very unique, but well, I would say it doesn't really matter. After all, it's pretty clear that neither of you are suffering from the Derangement, either ours or yours. So, I don't see any problem if parts of you just happen to be made of Machinestone and steel rather than flesh and bone. Although…," she finished with a troubled look.

"Although?" Eule echoed at the same time Star did, indicating just how nervous that made both of them feel, and causing them to hold hands in the process. Äloy adding her own tiny, warm hands to the hold made Eule calm down just a little bit more.

"That old bat Lansra would probably have herself a fit when she learns about you two being half-Machine. Jezza, I think, wouldn't hold that against you two since you're not going about harming anyone. She's logical that way. Lansra though? The moment she hears that half-Machine bit, she'll probably demand something like you two leave the Embrace, if not Nora lands entirely. She's a fearful, nasty old bat, that one," Teersa explained with a sour frown marring her normally smiling face.

As alarmed as Eule was by that assessment, her curiosity was now piqued. "Lansra? Jezza?" she asked.

Before Teersa could reply, Äloy piped up: "Are they important people like you, Teersa?"

Teersa cocked her head curiously at Äloy with a smile. "Oh? And what make you so sure that I'm important, Aloy?"

"It's pretty obvious. You act important, even though you try hard not to, so you must be really important for the Nora…wait! Are you a Matriarch?!" Äloy asked.

Teersa sighed, still with that smile on her face. "Can't hide anything from you for long, eh?" she chuckled, before continuing: "You're partially right. I suppose I should introduce myself properly now that you've caught me. Would be pretty rude of me otherwise. My name is still Teersa, but there's a High Matriarch you're supposed to add to that beforehand."

"Then you know who my mother is," Äloy said with an intense look on her adorable face. "Tell me, please!"

Eule watched sadness creep into Teersa's smile as she looked at little Äloy. "I'm sorry, Aloy. I took a vow of silence on the matter just like Lansra and Jezza, and this a vow I take seriously."

Eule's heart melted at seeing Äloy visibly deflate, and she gently wrapped an arm around the little Gestalt girl in a one-armed hug.

"Can't you at least tell me why my mother abandoned me? Did she hate me?" Äloy asked quietly from within Eule's hug.

Teersa sighed. "I can't tell you exactly what happened. I can only tell you that…I believe your mother gave you to us because she felt that you are to fulfill some greater purpose. What purpose that is, I have no idea. I just know that the way your mother left you to us cannot possibly be out of hate. I know it's likely not the answer you were looking for, but it's the most I can say without outright breaking my vow with my fellow High Matriarchs."

Äloy said nothing, merely burying her face into Eule's side. Eule had the sense that Äloy was most definitely not satisfied with that answer, but realized that she wasn't going to get any more out of Teersa. Not at this time. Eule could only embrace Äloy and offer her comfort, but she was going to do the best she can on that front. Eule did smile at seeing Star reach down and gently pat and rub Äloy's head though. It seemed even her lover was becoming fond of this adorable, curious, and brave little Gestalt girl.

"Which also brings me to your question, Aula," Teersa continued. "Lansra and Jezza are also High Matriarchs. It's only us three at the moment. Not enough mothers have had as many generations live yet."

Eule blinked and stared at Teersa in combination surprise and bewilderment. "What do you mean?" she asked. When Teersa cocked her head at Eule, Eule clarified: "I mean what you said about not enough mothers having as many generations yet?"

Teersa momentarily gave Eule a confused look before it turned into realization. "Oh yes, outsiders who've not even heard of the Nora before. I must be getting a bit senile in my old age," she laughed, shaking her head. "Let me explain: the Matriarchs are the leaders of the Nora, and the High Matriarchs are the leaders of those Matriarchs. How we decide who gets to be Matriarchs of either kind is by how many living generations the mother has. If a mother's children has their own children, then she's a Matriarch. Now if those children in turn have their own children, then that Matriarch becomes a High Matriarch because, well, if she can manage her own family well enough that all those generations are still kicking around, then surely she must be a good leader for the whole tribe as well, right?" Teersa's smile turned a bit sardonic. "Granted, this does produce the occasional Lansra, but all in all, it's a system that has served us Nora well for as long as we can remember."

Eule tilted her head as she thought about that kind of government. She had no idea what to call it, but Teersa's explanation of it does make a certain amount of sense. At the very least, it was a very family-oriented style of government, and should produce at least some decently kind leaders. Although given the Eusan Nation's own leaders, Eule knew that wasn't necessarily a sure thing.

As if she were a Kolibri, Teersa then asked: "Now I'm curious though: how does your tribe–this 'Eusan Nation'–choose its leaders? Do you have Matriarchs too, or do you have a king like the Carja do?"

Eule leaned back in her seat as she thought. "We do have, I suppose, a pair of matriarchs as our leaders: the Great Revolutionary and her Daughter. They're not matriarchs like your Matriarchs though. I suppose they are matriarchs in a sense, but…"

"Except one matriarch just wants as much power and control as possible to fill that egotistical head of hers, and the other matriarch is too meek to stop her," Star bluntly said, making Eule wince and instinctively look around, hoping that no one heard Star before remembering where they were and sighing in relief.

Teersa gave Star a thoughtful look. "I take it neither of your matriarchs are particularly popular?"

Eule grimaced. "I think the Daughter is…decent. Rotfront is a decently good place to live thanks to her, if a bit…bland, I suppose. To be fair though, we do still have a war going on, so it's probably not too unexpected that things like art might be…looked down upon."

Star tilted her head curiously at Eule. "And that old hag?"

Eule winced again, before forcibly trying to make herself relax. "The Great Revolutionary…does seem a teensy bit…excessive?"

Star nodded. "No matter how you look at it, that enormous palace she built for herself on Heimat screams 'Excessive' with a capital "Ü". It's basically a whole arcology made up of a bunch of giant black obelisk-looking skyscrapers, as if it weren't tacky enough."

Eule grimaced once more. She couldn't help but agree with her lover on that, but there was a part of her that still worried over Star getting in trouble for her comments despite how irrational it was to assume that would happen here, as was evidenced by Teersa, who merely looked at Star with an expression Eule could only describe as either "thoughtful puzzlement" or "puzzled thoughtfulness".

"I've only heard the word 'palace' once to describe the Carja King's house. It's his own personal house, and from what I've heard of it, it's bigger than even the town hall of Mother's Heart. Honestly, I think someone with a house that big either has a truly impressive family size, or they have an ego the size of a Tallneck. Like a dozen Lansras all stuffed into a single person. It sounds like this Great Revolutionary of yours is one of those kinds of people," Teersa concluded.

Eule could only grimace at Teersa's words, and thank the Red Eye that Teersa wasn't a citizen of the Eusan Nation.

"Well, I suppose the only thing you can do is to outlive that Great Revolutionary of yours. Everyone, even kings and matriarchs, eventually pass on. Maybe the one who succeeds this Great Revolutionary will prove to be a better matriarch to her people," Teersa mused.

Even as Eule grimaced again but for an entirely different reason, she heard Star say: "Yeah, not likely. The old hag has been kicking around for nearly 200 years, and she and her Daughter don't look like they're going to kick the bucket anytime soon."

Eule was surprised when Teersa looked surprised. "200 years? Surely, you must be mistaken. No one can live to be that old. At least, not without turning into a withered old tree that would fall down in the gentlest breeze," Teersa waved off, chuckling.

Eule looked at Star in surprise, who was in turn also giving her the same look, before turning back to Teersa. "Is Bioresonance not something known to you?" Eule asked.

Teersa merely looked at Eule with a puzzled expression. Eule looked over to Rost, but he was also giving her a similarly puzzled look, as was Äloy.

"It's a kind of…power a few rare Gestalt women and a few specialized female Replika models have," Eule tried to explain. "I…don't know how to better explain it. All I know is that the Great Revolutionary and her Daughter are both Bioresonants and that allows them to live for a very long time, among other abilities. No one knows how old they really are, but they have been ruling the Eusan Nation for the past 181 years, and they have not aged a day throughout the entirety of their rule. It's likely that they will rule the Nation for many centuries to come."

Teersa's puzzlement turned into a look of thoughtfulness. "That's…interesting, and a bit disturbing. I suppose it's for the best then that your Eusan Nation is likely very far away from here if you haven't even heard of any of the tribes here. I do want to ask you two one thing though: if you were to somehow find a way to return to where you came from, would you–"

"No," Eule said in unison with Star.

Eule took a deep, calming breath before saying: "Teersa, returning to exactly where we came from would mean death for the both of us. And honestly, even if our Derangement, as you call it, hadn't happened, I like it here. It feels so much more…alive than the Eusan Nation was. I mean, Rotfront is a decent place to live in, but everywhere that's outside the enclosed domes and buildings is nothing but snow and ashes from both the weather and all the Fabrikationwarts, er, Factory Districts. I…think I prefer the green and brown of the land here in the Embrace than the white and grey of Rotfront, to be honest."

"Not to mention the blue sky instead of just constant clouds made at least partly of smoke," Star added. "Honestly, you can't even step outside the buildings and domes without some kind of respirator, er, something to basically filter out the air before you breathe it in."

Teersa nodded. "It does sound like your 'Rote-front' is a far cry from All-Mother's Embrace. Very well then, I'll petition for you two to be allowed to stay. Hopefully, Jezza will see reason on this, because I highly doubt Lansra will," she said that last bit with a mutter, before smiling at Eule and Star in turn. "And honestly, even if you two are outsiders, you're both some of the more decent outsiders I've ever had the pleasure of meeting so far, and from the looks of it, Rost and Aloy would agree with me on that. Which reminds me: thank you for allowing me to join you for dinner, Rost. It's been an honor, and I do hope my next visit will be for more…relaxing reasons."

Rost nodded so deeply that it looked almost like a bow to Eule's eyes. "I would rather say that it's been an honor for me to host you, High Matriarch Teersa."

"Ha! Still stubborn as always, aren't you, Rost? Well, I suppose it wouldn't be you if you weren't so hard-headed on some things, eh? It makes me wonder if old age will make you more or less stubborn. Ah well, we'll find out eventually, won't we?" Teersa laughed as she walked out the door. Eule could still hear Teersa's laughter as she closed the door behind her.

Eule stared at that door for quite some time after Teersa's laughter had faded into the distance before turning back to Rost. "Teersa seems rather nice," she commented with a smile.

Rost returned that smile with a slight one of his own. "Honestly, I would say that High Matriarch Teersa is the most…personable of the High Matriarchs. Some of the tribe might call her weak because of it, but I would say those of the tribe that do are fools."

Eule's smile became wider. It was nice to hear that Rost has such a high opinion of Teersa as well. She then looked down at her side, where Äloy still had her face buried there. "Wasn't she a nice person, Äloy?" Eule asked.

"I guess," Äloy said with a muffled voice, due to the side of Eule's body being a pretty decent muffler. "I wish she could've told me more about my mother. Now I just have more questions."

Eule gently patted Äloy's head in consolation. "It does seem like she tried to tell you as much as she could though, didn't she?" Eule asked, before adding: "And at the very least, it looks like you'll have someone sympathizing with you at the Proving."

"…I guess," Äloy conceded, before finally removing her face from Eule's side to look up at her. "If mother doesn't hate me though, then why did she leave me?"

Eule sighed, because there weren't any good answers she could give Äloy. "I don't know why, and I can't even begin to imagine why. All I can say is that no matter who your mother was or why she did the things she did, in the end, you have a father who loves you with all his heart, even if you don't call him that."

Äloy turned to look at Rost. Eule was delighted to see a small smile form on Rost's lips, and he nodded affectionately at his little girl. Eule was just as delighted to see Äloy smile widely at that, and her delight only increased when Äloy hugged her.

"Yeah, you're right. Thanks, Eu-le," Äloy said with a smile before she adopted a look of determination as she turned to look at Star. "One day, Shtar, I'll learn to say your name right," Äloy declared.

Star grinned at Äloy. "I'll be looking forward to that, kid. Just a pointer: try not to pronounce the 'S' so hard. It makes you sound like you're saying 'Sch" instead," she advised.

Eule tried not to giggle at Äloy's frown as the little Gestalt girl thought.

"But they sound almost the same!" Äloy protested. "It just sounds like you're saying 'Sh' to me!"

Those words made Eule think more deeply on the subject as she tried to remember just what Äloy and the other Gestalts here were saying when they pronounced words with any "S" letters in them. Not just for Äloy's sake, but because something about the way they pronounced "S" was ringing a bell in Eule's memories.

"Äloy, can you say Rost's name again?" Eule asked.

Äloy turned to look at Eule in puzzlement. "Rost?" she said in an almost questioning tone.

There. Eule could hear a distinct difference in the way Äloy pronounced the "s" in Rost. Äloy pronounced it with a more hissing sound rather than the usual soft shushing sound as is normal for Eusan Standard Language. No wonder it sounded to Äloy like Star's name was Schtar instead. And still, that little fact was niggling in the back of Eule's mind, but she couldn't quite remember where she heard that same pronunciation. It had to have been somewhere in S-23 Sierpinski, but otherwise, Eule couldn't quite remember where in that place she heard that sort of an accent from…

Accent. That was it! Erika Itou! She had also pronounced her 'S' letters much like how Äloy pronounced. No, actually, it was exactly the same. The same hissing sound used for the letter 'S', and that made Eule's train of thought take a very strange turn. Following that train led to a sudden chill going down Eule's carbon steel spine.

"Eule? You okay?" Star asked. "You looked like you just realized something, and then looked like you saw a ghost."

"Star, do you remember my mentioning Erika Itou last night?" Eule asked in turn.

"That Gestalt girl who shouldn't have been in S-23 Sierpinski to begin with? Yeah?"

"Well, she and her family are both immigrants from Vineta, according to their files," Eule explained.

"Yeah?"

"And Erika spoke with a distinct Vinetan accent. You could hear it when she said certain words with the letter 's' in them."

"I'll take your word for it since I never met this Erika before, but go on."

"…Star, the way Äloy pronounced the letter 's' was exactly the same way Erika pronounced that letter. Äloy is speaking with a Vinetan accent," Eule said, putting extra emphasis on "Vinetan".

Star blinked, and then blinked some more as Eule watched her process that revelation. "No, what? What are you saying? That this place is somewhere on Vineta? Is that possible? Isn't Vineta supposed to be an ocean world?" Star asked in an increasingly puzzled tone.

"It is, but Erika had said there are islands on Vineta…Rost, do you know how close the ocean is from here?" Eule asked, turning to the Gestalt man.

Rost looked at Eule with a look of complete bafflement on his face. "What's an…ocean? Meer? I have never heard of either word in my life before."

Now baffled herself, Eule asked: "Ocean? Sea? You know, a very large body of saltwater?"

Rost still stared at Eule with that same look of bafflement. "Salt…water? As in salty water? And large body…do you mean a lake? Why would there be any lake of salty water?"

Now Eule was well and truly baffled. "Okay, what's the biggest lake you can think of, and how big would you say it is?"

Rost tugged on and stroked his braided beard as he thought. "The biggest lake I can think of is the Daybrink. It's a massive lake that the Carja claim as theirs. It's many, many times bigger than the lake Searcher's Course feeds into: Mother's Birthwater. It's the lake I mentioned Mother's Cradle was built next to."

Star snickered. "Wait, back up. You call it 'Mother's Birthwater'?" she asked.

Rost merely gave Star a level gaze. "Yes, we do," he only said.

"Oh, that's…that's kind of gross, isn't it? I don't think I'd want to swim in it now, even if I could," Star continued, still snickering.

"I know, right?" Äloy asked, nodding in agreement. "Why would the Nora name it like that? It sounds so…icky when you think about it."

Rost sighed. "It was the name the Nora gave it in ages past, to keep with the naming of the settlements. It's a perfectly reasonable name," he said, still sounding reasonable himself.

Eule also sighed in amused exasperation. "Star, it's just a name. Could you please stop laughing so that we can get back on track?" she asked, albeit with a smile at how childish her lover could be at times.

"Yeah, yeah, okay," Star replied, still with a carbon steel teeth-revealing grin on her face though.

Eule sighed once more, albeit with her own smile on her face, as she then asked Rost: "So this Daybrink, how big would you estimate it to be exactly?"

Rost adopted another beard-stroking thoughtful look. "The Daybrink is truly massive. It cuts right through Carja territory as well as any mountain range. At its widest point, no human can hope to swim across it. Even with a boat, it can take almost an hour for that trip depending on the wind."

Eule shook her head. "Almost an hour? No, that's not an ocean. An ocean is a body of water that's so big, it can take months to sail from one island to another."

Rost blinked in Eule in shock. "Months?" he said, shaking his head in disbelief. "There's no lake in the world that's that big."

Star sighed. "Guess that means this place isn't Vineta. I mean, how can you have an ocean world where someone has never heard of an ocean before?"

Eule could only make baffled noises in reply. "But…then why the Vinetan accent?"

Star leaned back in her chair. "You got me. I'm just as confused as you are."

Meanwhile, Rost just stared at Eule and Star with an even blanker look than before. "Vineta? What, or rather, where is this Vineta place?"

"It's one of the Eusan Nation worlds. One of our oldest actually, liberated from the Empire just over 80 years ago," Eule explained. "It's sometimes called the 'Cradle of Mankind' because humanity first evolved there. Unfortunately, after a trio of wars over the millennia, each one somehow more destructive than the last, Vineta is a shadow of its former glory. Much of the landmass has been blasted apart, and it doesn't even have ice caps or most of its moon left. It's just one big ocean world–that is, an entire planet of nothing but saltwater as far as the eye can see save for a few scattered islands–with not a lot of people left on it. The only people there these days are the remaining local population and the People's Army garrison."

"I…see?" Rost said in a tone that indicated that he didn't. "I suppose I will offer my condolences for this Vineta place, but I don't think it's anywhere close to the Sacred Lands. Honestly, the idea of an entire land that's almost nothing but salty water is alien to me."

Eule sighed and leaned back, staring at the ceiling, now completely and utterly baffled that her train of thought had now somehow run off its track and into an ocean. Without any rails to guide her thoughts, they now wandered to the day's events.

Eule ended up grimacing from how frustrated she was at being so powerless to help Äloy, even despite having a pistol. Yes, her pistol was powerful, but like Star's revolver, it was thunderously loud and thus would be like holding up a giant neon sign to every Machine in hearing range screaming "Here I am". Not only that, but she only had so much ammunition for her pistol. Exactly 99 rounds, the last time she counted: 11 in her pistol itself counting the already chambered bullet, plus an additional 88 still neatly packed in their 20-round boxes (counting the full box of 10x20mm ammo Star was carrying), labelled in the combination of Eusan Standard Language and Eusan Formal Script (formerly called Eusan Imperial Script) that one would typically see on such boxes.

99 bullets would have sounded like a lot to Eule at first. Unfortunately, she knew from personal experience that she would go through those 99 bullets like a Gestalt child gobbling down green onion and bacon pancakes during Mondfest, due to fighting the things that used to be her sisters, friends, and coworkers with them. It was a sheer stroke of luck that Eule, Star, and the other members of their party had managed to find stray ammunition tucked away in drawers, lockers, and other random places as they were trying to escape into the mines in desperate bid to rendezvous with a promised evacuation zone. Otherwise, Eule and Star would have a lot less ammunition than they did now.

And even without fighting anyone, Eule realized that eventually, her aim would get rusty without practice. Unfortunately, without any foreseeable way to get any more bullets, it means that every bullet both she and Star use for target practice is one less bullet to use in battle. But refusing to practice for fear of using up all their bullets would simply mean that when the time came to use them, it's likely that their rusty aim would result in them using up more ammo to hit their targets than they would have if they had practiced. No matter how Eule looked at it: it was a lose-lose situation for her and Star if they kept using only their guns.

Thus, Eule realized that they needed more weapons. Weapons that they can actually replenish ammunition for. And after watching Rost make arrows using only Machine parts and sticks, Eule had a pretty good idea which weapon they needed.

"Hey, Star. 220 kH?" Eule asked as she set her radio receiver module to that frequency.

Star tilted her head to look at her before nodding. Immediately after that, Eule heard through her module Star's scratchy voice ask: "Yeah, Eule, over?"

"Have you ever shot a bow before, over?" Eule asked.

"Nope. In fact, Rost's bow was literally the first time I've ever even seen a bow in real life, over."

"Me too, and I was afraid of that. Still, I supposed this means we'll be learning how to shoot a bow together, over," Eule broadcasted with a happy smile.

"…Wait, really? You want us to learn to shoot a bow of all things? Over?" Star ended that broadcast with an incredulous look at Eule.

"Why not? We don't have unlimited ammunition for our guns, and it seems like we won't be getting any more ammunition for a very long time, if ever. Plus, Rost just demonstrated that we can make arrows fairly easily, so why not switch to a bow while we still can, over?" Eule pointed out, and then almost giggled at Star's dumbfounded expression.

"That's…that's not a bad idea actually," Star admitted before she looked down mournfully at her revolver. "I get the logic in what you're saying, but…I'm going to miss being able to fire this old girl when I do eventually run out of ammo for her, over."

Eule reached up and gently patted her lover on her shoulder. "It's okay. You'll still always have her even without any bullets to fire. Plus, who knows? Maybe one day, we will get more ammunition for it? Over?"

Star's reply broadcast to Eule's shoulder patting was a tender kiss on the top of Eule's head. "Point taken. So, let's see if Rost is willing to take on a pair of new students then, over?"

Eule smiled happily in reply. "Yes, let's. Out."

Eule then realized that Äloy was looking up at her with a less than satisfied expression. "Ah, my apologies, Äloy. I was just having a short private discussion with Star. Did you want to talk about something?"

Äloy shook her head. "No, that's not it. It's just…I wish I could speak and hear radio like you and Sh…Star can. So that I can have those unhearable talks with you two too."

Eule smiled kindly at Äloy. "Maybe someday, you can too," she said hopefully, and becoming delighted at the little Gestalt girl's hopeful look in reply before she turned to Rost at last. "Rost, there's something Star and I wish to request of you, if it's not too much trouble."

Rost didn't say anything. He didn't need to. His tilted head of inquisitiveness was more than enough to convey what he was asking.

Eule stood up and bowed deeply to Rost, bending to almost 90 degrees in a formal bow of sincere request. "Please teach Star and I how to use a bow," she began.

Eule heard a thump from somewhere next to and above her, and a worried glance at her side showed Star rubbing the top of her head with an annoyed look on her face before Star too performed the same formal bow to Rost.

"I deeply regret not being able to be of more assistance aside from some rock-throwing," Eule continued. "And truth be told, I don't want to be helpless in this land when the bullets for my pistol runs out. So I beg of you, Rost, please teach us how to use a bow and arrow."

Several moments of nervous silence passed by before Rost finally sighed. "First of all, please get up. I'm finding that I don't like such obvious displays of submission towards me…just as much as Teersa doesn't like it coming from me, I think," he said wryly.

When Eule did get up to look him in the eye, she found him looking at her fondly, with a small smile on his smile that meant that he was feeling that smile a lot more on the inside than he showed.

"Eu-le, yesterday, you helped save my little girl from potentially dying down there in that Metal World ruin. And by your own admission, you shielded Aloy from the fall with your own body, and injured yourself in the process," Rost said, making Eule reach up to the scab of dried oxidant on her cheek. "We can experiment with salvebrush to see if that helps tomorrow. For now though: I never did formally thank you for that and I regret that, but now that I have opportunity to do so: thank you, Eu-le, from the bottom of my heart," he said solemnly, making Eule blush in response.

Rost then looked up at Star's eyes. "Shtar, or rather, Star, I suppose: you risked your own life to save Aloy just as Eu-le did. That Strider herd and its Watcher guards could've trampled you just as they would've done the same to me, and yet you leapt into the fight with me without hesitation. Thank you, Star, and again, I apologize for the delayed thanks," he said just as solemnly, making Star rub the back of her head in embarrassment.

Eule then watched him turn his gaze back to her. "If you two wish to learn how to hunt with a bow, whether to hunt a beast, Machine, or–unfortunately–a human; then I will gladly teach you two how to do so. It is truly the least I can do for you two after all you have done for Aloy and I. I will be more than happy to teach you two the way of the bow along with Aloy…and if you two don't mind, I would also like to teach you both the way of the spear as well. A good spear will save you at close ranges, when you might not be able to draw a bow in time. With a good bow and spear, there's nothing a Brave can't take on at any range, and that is what I would like to teach you two along with Aloy."

Eule looked at him in surprise at the offer, and thought deeply about it. The idea of her and Star learning how to use a spear of all weapons nearly made Eule giggle at the absurdity of it, especially at the mental image of herself wielding a spear. Imagine that. A noncombatant Replika model like a Eule not just going into battle, but with a spear as well? It sounded like something out of one of the more absurd pre-Empire films that had survived the Empire's initial conquest of Vineta all those millennia ago. That one film about cavemen fighting dinosaurs with sharp sticks and stones had always stuck with her for some reason, at least partially due to how much she'd been laughing at it for most of its runtime.

And yet…Eule couldn't deny Rost's logic. A spear does sound like it'd be a good backup weapon to have in case her bow failed her or if an enemy was too close for a bow to work effectively. Besides, Eule did undergo reserve military training due to the Eusan Nation's policy of compulsory military training/service for all citizens, including their Replika citizens. That reserve training had also included rudimentary hand-to-hand combat courses, so that should be applicable to spear fighting…right?

"I'll accept," Eule finally said to Rost. "Please teach me how to use a spear as well as a bow."

"I'll take you up on that offer too," Star added. "After all, using a spear can't be that much more different than using a bayoneted rifle, right?"

Eule looked at her lover in surprise. "You learned how to use a rifle and bayonet?"

Star nodded in reply. "Yeah, all us Stars are supposed to be able to serve as infantry if needed, so I got trained on the Type-33 assault rifle, which included bayonet training. Not sure how that was going to be useful against Imperial Army lobsterbacks, but at least I know how to stick a bayonet in them if they got that close to me."

Rost stared so blankly at Star that Eule had to hold back the urge to giggle. "Assault rifle? Bayonet?"

"Uhhh, it's basically just putting a knife on a rifle–basically a bigger and longer version of Eule's pistol–to make an awkward-looking spear. That's really all that is," Star explained.

"I see," Rost replied, although his puzzled look made Eule doubt if he really did. "Then I hope that might help you learn how to fight with a spear when we begin training…tomorrow. After we get a good night's sleep."

This time, Eule did giggle. Both from how much sense it made, and how little Äloy looked so disappointed at Rost's declaration.

"Yes, Aloy. Bedtime," Rost said in a very final tone.

"Okaaay," Äloy replied, clearly not happy to be calling it a night, but still seeing sense all the same. "Night then, Rost. Eu-le, Star, see you both in training tomorrow!" she said excitedly before climbing up the ladder to her bed in the floor above.

"I wonder how much sleep the kid is actually going to get with that much energy still in her," Star noted wryly.

"Hopefully enough," Rost replied with a sigh, before looking back and forth at Eule and Star. "Perhaps we should get some sleep as well. We all have a big day tomorrow, and tiredness isn't something that's conducive to learning how to use either bows or spears. Good night, Eu-le, Sh-Star."

With Eule's and Star's good nights following him, he put out all the lights save for the fireplace before then climbing up to his "bed" once more.

"I really want to fix this problem of us taking his bed every night," Eule noted.

"It'll probably happen. Maybe we can make a new bed for us somewhere here?" Star asked.

"Oh? I didn't realize either of us were either Aras or Elsters," Eule joked.

Star rubbed the aramid fiber-reinforced polyethylene shell on her chin in comtemplation. "Maybe we can learn from Rost? Never too late for a pair of young Replikas to learn new tricks, eh?"

Eule giggled quietly. "I don't think that's how that saying goes, love."

"I've heard it both ways," Star said with a grin.

Eule giggled some more. "Ara Elf would approve of that ridiculousness, I believe."

Star's grin widened. "Praise from an Ara? Must be a sign that we'll do well in the crafting department."

Eule was trying hard not to let her giggles get too loud at this point. "Hopefully so."

After some time though, Eule and Star were once more laying together on top of that fox skin mattress, covered in a blanket made of yet more fox skins. Honestly, as morbid as Eule initially found it, she was actually rather fond of it now. Even though the "mattress" was just sewn-together fox skins laid on top of a wooden frame, it was surprisingly comfortable. Especially when Star was sharing that bed with her.

Eule gave Star a kiss, intending it to be a goodnight kiss. What followed though was considerably steamier than just a simple peck on the lips.

"Someone's feeling frisky tonight, isn't she?" Star asked in between pants when their polyethylene-laced lips finally parted, along with their tongues.

"Sorry about that, love," Eule replied, breathing hard herself. "I guess I had a lot more stress pent up than I thought."

Star hugged her in reply. "Don't apologize for that, Eule. We've both got a bit of stress to relieve."

"Oh? Then what are you suggesting we do for stress relief, my dear Star?" Eule asked, blinking at her lover coquettishly.

Star's reply to that was a grin, as well as a black robotic hand reaching down to unbutton Eule's form-fitting jacket. "Maybe a bit of personality stabilization? Just quietly?"

Eule smiled and reached over to unbutton Star's jacket as well. "Just a bit, and just as quietly," she happily agreed.

With her lover's jacket undone, Eule could now pull up Star's black bodice to reveal her just-as-black sports bra underneath. "It still amazes me every time to see that the Eusan Nation issues you and your sisters with nothing but black clothes all the way down," Eule noted.

"Yeeeah…unfortunately, the State isn't really interested in spending rationmarks on color options for our uniforms or even our underwear," Star noted with a sigh, before she grinned. "But well, at least I'm not black all the way down. Not there, at least," she joked.

Eule giggled quietly. "No, love, you're certainly not. Not with those underneath your bra," she teased, gently pushing up Star's bra to reveal her adorably compact breasts and gently rubbing the stiff nipples.

Sighing with pleasure, Star then added with a grin as she pushed up Eule's white bodice, revealing her cream-colored underwire bra: "I'm glad our shells don't extend all the way to our fronts," she said as she reached behind Eule underneath the back of her jacket to unhook her bra. "Otherwise, I think you wouldn't be enjoying this as much as you would."

"This" turned out to be Star moving down to suck on one of Eule's breasts, gently nibbling on one of her erect nipples, while she just as gently played with Eule's other breast. Eule's breathing quickened as she felt warm arousal spread from her breasts down to the pit of her motor and between her white robotic legs. Fortunately, she felt Star pull down her shorts and panties with her free hand to expose that precious spot, and then gently rub her clitoris in circles.

Eule buried her face into Star's hair, just as black as her own, to muffle the moans trying to escape her lips from that most sublime pleasure. It was when Star started inserting a black robotic finger in and out of her pussy, all while a black thumb continued to rub her clitoris from side to side, that Eule was genuinely having trouble keeping the moans down to a level she thought could be muffled both by Star's hair and by the fox skin blanket she'd pulled over both of them.

Eule ended up being relieved in every sense of the word when she finally climaxed, producing muffled gasps as the waves of pleasure washed over her. As Eule shuddered in pleasure, she watched as Star brought up her own soaked hand, and then licked it.

"Ah, the taste of Eule. A most wonderful flavor indeed," Star proudly declared.

Giggling, Eule grinned naughtily at her lover. "Ah, but for me, I'm of the personal opinion that the taste of Star trumps even that."

With that said, Eule crawled down, and pulled down Star's black shorts and her just-as-black panties to reveal Star's naked crotch, which Eule was pleased to notice that it was very wet. She gently lifted Star's robotic thigh, which was just as white as her own even if it was significantly longer, brought her mouth to Star's thoroughly exposed private place, and began gently licking Star's clitoris.

The muffled moans from above told Eule that she was succeeding in bringing her lover just as much pleasure as Star brought her, which was all the more reason to continue. As Eule's licked up and down that stiff bean of Star's, tasting the delicious juices that were spilling out of Star's private place, she pulled off the glove of one of her own robotic hands in order to insert one of her own black fingers into Star. She pulled in and out, creating a gentle rhythm that caused Star to pant and moan.

Eventually, Eule felt Star's muscles tighten rhythmically on her finger as she climaxed, which gave her no small amount of pleasure along with hearing Star's muffled moans, hopefully still inaudible with Star's hand and the fox skin blanket in the way.

When Star had finally rode out the pleasure enough to remove her hand from her mouth, Eule crawled up to kiss Star on her newly uncovered mouth. "How was that for personality stabilization, dear?" she asked.

Star grinned. "I definitely enjoyed that as much as you did, my cute little owl," she said as she embraced Eule in a warm hug.

"I'm glad you did, since I enjoyed that very much indeed, my beloved starling," Eule said as she returned the hug just as warmly.

Star snickered. "You know, I've always wondered who named my model 'Starling'. The name alone implies a very small and cute bird, and yet look at me and my sisters in all our 220 cm tall glory."

Eule giggled back. "If you're talking about mismatched names, look at us Eules. What part of us looks like a nocturnal predatory bird? Honestly, I think we should've had each other's model names."

"Well, there were some really small and cute owls on Vineta before it got turned into an ocean world. I've seen them before in those old pre-Empire nature documentaries. They were probably referring to those owls when they named your model," Star happily insisted.

Eule giggled once more. "Well, you may not be small, but I still think you're the most adorable Star I've ever had this kind of a relationship with."

Star laughed quietly. "Remind me: how many Star units did you make love to again?"

"Hmm, counting you?" Eule asked with a cheeky grin. A flurry of kisses from Star made her break out in giggles and answer her own question: "Just the one: you."

Finally though, Eule and Star settled back into a warm embrace, with both of them gazing into each other's sleepy eyes.

"I do hope Teersa convince the other Nora we're not a threat," Eule quietly said. "I don't want to leave this place. I like it here, with you, with Rost, and with Äloy."

Star smiled sleepily, with her eyes closed. "I like anywhere with you, Eule. But here…yeah, this is good. Rost is nice, he cooks almost as well as you, and the kid is a sweet little Gestalt. Don't really want to leave either."

Eule smiled at the sight and snuggled against her lover. "Then let's pray to the Red Eye for the–" Eule had to stop to let out a yawn. "–for the best. Good night, Star."

"Night, Eule." Star did in fact mumble that, but it was fine. Eule's words were practically mumbles themselves as she drifted off to dreamland.

---

This night, Eule's dreams took her to a tea party with EULR-S231 "Januar", MNHR-S2301 "Beo", and–curiously–Rost and Teersa (both of them wearing their normal animal skin clothes) sitting at the table. Beo even had a chair sized for her massive frame somehow, and Eule's dream self did not question this anymore than she questioned Rost and Teersa's presence at this tea party. She certainly did not question Star's presence at her side, standing guard as though she was an honor guard for them all.

As for Eule herself, she and EULR-S2302 "Februar" were acting as waitresses for the tea party. She smiled in delight every time Februar bent down to serve something, and Januar gave her a loving kiss on her cheek. Eule's dream self's heart melted at seeing Februar's normally stoic and almost Ara-like face break just a bit to smile at her sister-lover.

Then Eule's already molten heart practically disintegrated into a gooey puddle at the sight of Äloy appearing out of nowhere, dressed in a miniature version of a Eule's uniform, walking up to the table with a tray full of teacakes and cookies, and managing to just reach up to the table to place it there for everyone to enjoy. January and Beo were both practically cooing at the adorable little Gestalt girl, with Teersa doing the same. Even the ever-stoic Rost was smiling proudly at his little girl, with Äloy grinning widely at all the attention.

Eule's happiness at this entire scene was such that she most definitely did not question why they were all somehow standing on an expanse of endless water, somehow flat as a pane, with the white spires and blocks of skyscrapers emerging from the water's surface in the distance identifying the dream location as somewhere near one of Vineta's few cities. Eule had read somewhere that Vineta's cities were all built into the seafloor and mostly underwater to provide maximum protection from orbital strikes, with the few building peeking up from the surface being buildings that needed to be above the water like communications antennae, spaceports, etc., but her dream self wasn't thinking about any of that, and was busy simply enjoying the fantastical view as her body got its much-needed rest in preparation for what was coming in the morning.