Episode 49- It's time to rest…
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She waited for the two to walk off/ be dragged away, and then leaned on the railing close to the white haired girl. "Instead of placing a blame on someone, or admitting to my own shortcomings, Trixie will make you an offer instead. Trixie is a seer, and can help you to look. Though mostly the here and now, the past and more importantly the present, is a very flicky matter for Trixie to deal with. The past is usually too blurry, or Trixie just can't find a good connection with the past. And the future… almost always, is very, very vague and generalised. Like, the population will increase drastically, but how? Where would those people come from? And most importantly, when will this happen? For Trixie, it could happen after one day, to ten years. Usually trying to look beyond that is straight up impossible."
The elf girl turned her brimming with life eyes towards her talking partner. "I think that for now, it's best to not dig too deep. After all, a tree must grow mighty roots first, before it can rise into the sky."
Trixie let out a 'hmm'… and the two of them continued looking at the planet they were flying away from. It was even smaller than Po'Midor, which was already an achievement. Also, it looked a little too uneven to be considered a spheroid. More like a chunk carved out from the rest of something, to tell the truth.
The female protoss was staring in amazement at the newly formed, somewhat simpler, and definitely smaller version of the one standing beside her. It's head had two glowing green eyes, and nothing more. With some more precision weaving and control, Wit rectified the problem. Then he adjusted the teeth, and the tongue, and then the cheeks… and kept changing, and changing. Though, at the end, he made a mass grow over the thing's face, which finally solidified into an exact replica of the mask on the Wit's face.
The final touch was a mushroom cap on the head that retained its sponginess and texture. Zimowit took a step back, and admired work well done… work well done admired Wit in kind. Left hand extended, being mirrored by the smaller shrooman. Right leg shook, parroted again. Satisfied, Wit now had to do one last thing. "We have a name, but you should have a unique one just for yourself."
It tried to parrot the worlds, but the newly formed tongue proved to be an obstacle. Only some galbred noises were let out. "Hmmm… Zimowit… Zima… Wyzima… Wyzimir! Perfect. We are Zimowit, but you are Wyzimir!" Only 'Mir, Mir!' Was echoed this time, somewhat understandable.
Her admiration was cut short as the probe beside her showed her a message. "Honored guest, Artanis returned, and wants to talk to you."
"Yes? Then just a moment." They took a few experimental steps around, and then some stretches to test the flexibility, before looking at her again. "The young un needs to grow quite a bit, how about it becomes your mouth? You can direct your thoughts at it, then the Terran words will come out, which will be interpreted by any psionic with no problem. Do you agree? Of course you do, see ya!"
Wit runned off, only to stop at the entrance, remembering one last thing "What is your name?"
The protoss remained stunned for a moment longer, before instinctively sending her thoughts out. The little one of course intercepted it, and shouted "Vella Glan!"
"Captain, I located the psi distributor. Shall we plant the explosives on it?"
"That's the order I received." Said the voice through the commons. Duran whipped out the package, but was stopped by the figure sitting on the two tailed fox that darted between him and the not so small device.
"Wait wait wait! Vice-Admiral Stukov is taking it under his own jurisdiction!" The casual gaze of the man with the red bonnet still made her head pulse painfully, and a wave of nausea washed over her, even if only for a second.
"Why didn't I hear those orders?"
"Vice-Admiral is a busy man, and so are you, Captain. You can ask him about it later, because he already sent his men. They will facilitate the disruptors disassembly" She jabbed her thumb back, showing the squad of Ghosts that freshly arrived. They didn't participate in the earlier battles, because special agents and all that.
"Very well. Take it away. Captain, I'll be returning to the command ship presently." He then turned around and walked away.
Jaruga released a sigh. There was something seriously wrong with this man, more so than among the typical Koprulu Ghosts. But the few that come with the Expeditionary Fleet… They weren't lunatics, or almost braindead from all the training regiments, psi suppressors or mind wipes. First and foremost, they were practically impossible to read, and didn't give out any presence.
Getting to know them at last a little bit better would be beneficial, but right now Jaruga and her two companions needed a bath. And some proper food. Alcohol was ruled out in two cases, citing the underage.
The two leaders of the colony and the two wizard helpers retired to one of the rooms. After some of the crew brought the table and four chairs, silence befell everything. In the meantime, the oldest in the room conjured a teapot and four cups, while the youngest filled them with blue, sparkling tea.
The old and bearded took one of the cups sipped. "First and foremost, I'am sorry for pulling… Trixie, was it? And the other fellow through the portal. I thought they were just some curious kids from the other end of the globe. Looking back, my portal wouldn't work if the young girl didn't have a strong connection to that little robot."
The heads of the Po'Midor looked at one another, and then nodded. "Stop stalling and tell us the important part already." The Mayor winced at his wife's tactless words, but just accepted it with the long suffering sigh of someone used to this.
The old man looked a little surprised, but started talking regardless. "You see, all the magic kind is an open secret, and under the boot of the government. It wasn't always like this, before the United Earth Directorate formed we-"
The 'Arthur' chose wisely to butt in and stop the rambling about good old times. "Had freedom and a lot of troubles. Not only the mundane world had many wars, but the wizard kind too. Yes, we are under harsh scrutiny from higher ups, but order is needed to stop all those mad magicals."
The 'Merlin' sent him a dirty look, before continuing. "Well, yes. In any case, here and now I will have to report to the Department of Magicalls about the whole situation. If they wish to intervene, they will. If they want me to open the portal permanently, I will have no other choice but to do so."
Before anyone could say something more, the student butted in again. "They have a whole range of equipment, from sensors to cameras. So the whole incident is recorded, and the people in the Ministry are giving us the courtesy of one week to make a full report."
"It's such a hassle… And lack of privacy."
"Considering the great amount of distributing and unhinged individuals that showed among the wizard kin through the ages, they have every right to do so."
The two leaders looked at themselves again, before the lead researcher just shrugged. Taking the signal as the end of her participation in this conversation, he turned back. It was better to end the squabble before it truly began. "How bad is it, the whole being under the boot situation?"
The old one said "Every one that needs to know about us, knows about us. Hidden cameras, wiretapping, magic power registrators, tight control over where we are going and why, one headache after another…"
The young one argued back. "Yes, but we don't have to worry about the witch hunts, blood purists, megalomaniacs, mad man's of the worst kind, and there are no nobles. Control means a calmer life for the average, law abiding citizen."
Seeing that it could explode into a serious argument, Mayor Morales intervened again. "It's not a problem! We are the biggest spies around affiliated with the UED, and we are already in the talks with the Expeditionary Force. On the contrary of what you think, we would welcome more contact with the cradle of humanity."
She could feel her foot slowly swelling, at last it wasn't because of her injury. Instead of any pain, there was just this weak feeling of something being off. Thanks to that, now the two of them practically copied men's style of walking. As in, the freshly infected, and the older infected were practically waddling like ducks. The one big meaty arm didn't help with balance, and it seems the newly swollen foot wasn't either.
Her walking in dazed boredom was stopped when the infected prisoner found one of the most important rooms in the whole Command Centre. The Control Room. Though, to tell the truth, half of the consoles were smashed apart or damaged enough to be qualified as junk. The other half was probably useless, by it damaged systems or something else destroyed by the rampart infection.
By one of the consoles was the oh so familiar leader of this dump. This time, she stopped the bile rising in her throat. After calming herself, she saw that the man had a tablet connected to the console, and was calmly taping on them both.
"So you finally found this place." Dobromir turned towards the two. "And, how is it? Dying of boredom I mean? I had to wait a whole Month before I had access to any source of entertainment. I don't know what is wrong with the other infected, but their carving for the Fun was almost practically killed. Hope it will change soon."
The two stared at each other for a while in silence. The third infected had already headed in the clouds, staring into the distance. "I'm certain you are interested in the poor soul from earlier, right? Well, I am interested in how she happened to be here… You know what? I'll just show you." He returned to typing at the two screens, beckoning her with his hand at the same time.
She was of two minds, but at the end of the day… she walked over. That didn't mean she stopped the shiver of disgust that came over her when she was close enough to the disgusting male. Looking over his shoulder, the prisoner could see that Dobromir was uploading something to the console, and it was finished by the looks of it.
"Here you go, the full story of what exactly happened. I'll go to see how the pod duo are faring." And he walked off, a hidden smirk on his face. There is nothing quite like sharing the trauma.
The freshly infected took the seat, and looked at the screen. It was an old style anime, with the title 'Abyss', it didn't look like anything special, but she WAS bored out of her mind.
Considering that his, no it was theirs now. Anyway, Wit's levitation wasn't the fastest mod of his… Their locomotion, the newly gained clogger, well… made 'clog' 'clog' noises as the shroomy guy rushed to the source of the… let's call it a signal?
After exiting the Common quarters (The one for non combatants) Wit started running towards the Warp Gates. Sure enough, after a few minutes, Artanis stood there, waiting for him, as the rest of the field troops returned en masse through the Gates.
Artanis, after spotting him, made a few steps forward. He was visibly troubled by something, and he didn't wait for a moment longer to share it. Just as Wit stopped abruptly, Artnis looked straight into his mask's eye holes, and said "My friend, something distributing happened, something worse than simple betrayal from prejudice, or maybe it was nothing more than that."
Wit easily noticed that Artanis's eyes were actually glowing. Usually, the glow was weak enough for the pupils to be visible. Right now, only pure power was filling the eyes, leaking a little. Though it disappeared more like a little wisps of flame, contrary to his-Their sibling, who had the slowly flowing mist.
"Aldaris, he tried to say that High Matriarch Raszagal was manipulated by someone, but before he finished Karrigan killed him! After Zeratul rightfully threw angry words at her, she admitted that she manipulated us protoss to eliminate the cerebrates! and then she left."
Well, now his eyes were blazing like two suns, though the glow faded rather quickly back to the low intensity. Wit now knew how to read protoss emotion, but Kerrigan… They thought that Dobromir calmed her down a little, but maybe the sleep and wake up call whiplashed so badly that she was worse than during the Overmind's life. But more importantly… "Was Dobromir there?"
"What?" Artanis's eyes dimmed down to their standard level. So this was… confusion? No, more like a derailed train of thoughts. "No… he wasn't there. Though I don't think it's very important right now. His ability to command zerg is nearly nonexistent, so he isn't much of a threat to us."
"No, no, no." Wit shook his-Theirs head. "This isn't what I meant. Kerrigan was a Ghost, a terrible step in Terrans life. The some harsh turbulence before and during the rebellion, the change into zerg, and losing something very loosely resembling a father figure in her life. Saying her mind is in tatters wouldn't even begin to shine the light on the whole mess…"
"But how is it connected to your earlier question?" The 'mind in pieces' somewhat grabbed his attention. It will never justify Kerrigan's actions, but it could at last tell him why.
"Aha, you see!" Wit triumphantly thrust his outstretched forefinger towards the air. "Dobromir never had mental issues, besides the self applied, of course." He lowered his-Their hand, and folded their arms over chest. "They are the complete opposites. He is almost constantly playing on her nerves. Dobromir is also an independent type of guy, busy with his own projects. He didn't go with us to the char, so he hasn't met Kerrigan since Braxis. There is a rather high possibility that he is still clueless, and I have no way to contact him."
"And why is this important?" Poor Artanis, he still didn't know.
"Because Dobromir is loyal only to the homeland. And himself. If Kerrigan steps out of the line, he will stop supporting her in the heartbeat. He never was your enemy, and probably never will be."
'Blueprint accepted, new item available for production.' A few clicks, followed by the replicator serving its purpose. Seems that Stikov wasn't forgetful, or dismissive. Besides the replicator, Jaruga, and her two companions received… increased privileges, so to speak. And while the other two were enjoying themselves right now, Jaruga herself wanted to be even more prepared than last time.
After a minute, the replicator stopped, it was done. Taking the grenade into her hand, Jaruga unscrewed the top, and took the peek inside. For safety reasons, she chose the slime one to avoid being blasted to oblivion. In the case of this grenade, the unscrewed top was the activator, so the substance inside the main body was inert, and useless for now. After sticking the finger in, she licked the slime.
It was sticky, as expected. There was the delicate, sweet aftertaste, as expected. It technically could serve as a food replacement, but that thing laid rather heavily on the stomach. Satisfied, Jaruga put the grenade back together, and put in her almost empty bandolier.
Now, only about sixty grenades left to fully refill her reserves…
The fox sighed happily, submerged into the almost scalding hot water. Thanks to the small boon from her small, and slightly younger companion, Miko the fox lady could enjoy the high temperature without any discomfort.
All the events prior put some pressure on her, but it was better than it could be, really. The eggheads at Po'Midor took a lot, really a LOT of consideration when tinkering with the uplifting the species. One of the adjustments was dulling somewhat the senses, so the nose and ears wouldn't be too offended with the noise and stink of humanity, and especially their machines. Of course, in the cradle of creation, heavy machinery was mostly absent, there weren't that many humans around, and the sources of electricity were completely clean.
But out there, among the typical humans? Miko could be thankful to her creators, because even if the smoke of cigarettes or gunsmoke offended her senses, she could tolerate it, to some degree. Probably thanks to the additional detoxification added somewhere during the creation. And the additional barriers inside her ear holes kept her from whimpering in agony during the Siege's Tanks bombardment. Sure, it still wasn't pleasant, but still much better than the alternative.
All that being said, Miko still needed a moment to relax or two, and a good soak in a silent room was just the perfect way to detoxify oneself.
"Drink!" "Drink!" "Drink!" "Drink!" Another glass slammed at the counter, probably with more force than necessary, followed by the loud cheer from the crowd.
Mina didn't know how, or when it happened, but one thing lent to another and now she had a drinking contest with one of the medics from the other table. Suffice to say, two ladies trying to drink one another under the table garnered a lot more attention than the typical drunk contest.
Even if her vision was getting kinda blurry, and she was glad for sitting, she would not yield. Oh no, Mina wouldn't lose to that… that… eh, she forgot already. Didn't matter. Victory would be hers… Maybe…