Lyra/Lazareth Invisa

i did mention in the epilogue that the humans agreed to gather for a meeting, and as mentioned in the other chapters this would be the equivalent of a video conference between the spaceships as they come to orbit erid. from the log entries in the game it's not explicitly stated that eden and the c.o.i are the only human factions? eden is the biggest and the c.o.i is at war with them, but i'm just going out on a limb and assuming that there's at least a couple more, obviously a lot smaller. i did also get the c.o.i's number of space stations wrong that's mb (the logs said they had three stations and i forgot the filament entry clarified that it was three not counting filament. whoops) so the meeting is like five spaceships arriving to orbit erid, one from eden, two from the other two human factions, and one more from the c.o.i that meets up with salvager so they can have the proper representatives present. nobody but the two c.o.i ships makes direct contact, and simon and grace stay in mary in her hangar along with rocky

ok so immediately the first thing about this is that grace and simon (and rocky) are going into the meeting with completely different mindsets. rocky is going to listen in on the humans and offer erid's perspective on the feasibility of their plans and trade ideas as erid's representative. grace is going to sort of mediate in case the humans cannot behave and also to interpret for rocky if needed. but simon is going to war. simon knows that if they want any smooth cooperation and for grace to be able to act as a mediator at all that they need to establish Dominance as soon as possible, while also retaining grace's sort of. yknow. they can't establish dominance via threatening the others, basically.

he decides that the way they're going to go about this, and he doesn't explicitly tell either grace or rocky any of this, is by demonstrating soft but irrefutable power. he has grace dress in the white crew jumpsuit, which isn't a color that still exists in that shade (that clean) anywhere in their universe, much less in a single non-patched garment. he takes one of the red jumpsuits for himself, because while grace's power has to be somewhat understated, simon needs to be a threat. bright colors don't exist anymore, and muted red and green were always eden's colors. him showing up in (relatively) bright, unblemished, clean red standing right behind grace in white is the best possible way to get them to immediately understand that while grace won't exert power, simon won't hesitate to do so if they do anything funny (guard dog behavior back at it again). he also keeps the sleeves rolled up to show off the prosthetic arm. someone in the comments of another ask had the idea that simon should make grace a flower crown and i agree so strongly, so while unfortunately they don't actually have enough flowers for this, simon will make grace a vine crown/circlet to wear to immediately cow eden into obedience and stun everyone else. he'll also wave grace's nerves away on having to keep his glasses in place, telling him that he should wear them as he always does: carelessly. glass is so incredibly scarce and priced on their side that the sight of this man being so careless with what is essentially a priceless artifact will only further cement the idea that THEY have the resource upperhand here.

again simon tells none of the reasons behind any of these choices to either grace or rocky, so grace just humours him on the vine crown and thinks nothing of the white jumpsuit and is immediately met with double-takes and shocked expressions the second he activates mary's camera feed (let's assume it has this, it probably doesn't).

simon's plan works, the other representatives are immediately made aware that grace is the main authority here and that any feuds between them will either need to be resolved later or set aside for now if they don't want to lose the oportunity they've been given (they kind of didn't want to believe the c.o.i that a man ostensibly allied with them was behind their sudden apparent salvation). eden's folks will be particluarly shocked to not only see simon alive and healthy and with a prosthetic (unthinkable use of resources), but also to see the vine crown on grace's head. they didn't actually really believe the c.o.i when they mentioned there might be seeds up for trade, but since the situation had already been ludicrous enough they'd decided they couldn't risk the chance of there actually being seeds on the line; so seeing the plant used as an accessory is kind of giving them a heart attack.

so most of the meeting would consist of grace getting the representatives to be honest and use their fucking words and have an honest open discussion on what they want, while rocky studies the humans and gives information on what erid can and cannot do for them (they were all forewarned of the eridians but all the representatives bar ava and the two other salvager crewmembers present still flinch and startle and stare whenever he speaks up). throughout all of this, simon stands in position slightly behind grace, arms crossed, expression impassive, interrupting only when grace's attempts to get them to stop arguing don't work (which is rare because he's a Teacher, but still)

despite there being a c.o.i representative from the organizers of needle, ava carries most of the conversation on their end, to the shock of the representative. she had enough time to steel herself and has been exposed to enough of grace's bullshit that she's almost no longer faced. the other representatives of the other factions are also a bit baffled that she's not taking a solid minute to process every single batshit insane revelation that comes out of grace or rocky's mouth, she's just rolling with it. she also had simon's exact same idea of immediately establishing not only the c.o.i but her particular dominance on this situation as grace's closest point of contact to them (bar simon), so she saved a slice of watermelon from the basket to purposefully eat it on camera in front of everyone. the salvager crew is unnecessarily smug about this. simon clocks what she's doing instantly and can't deny that he approves the tactic

I took some artistic liberty with this bc i felt that simon having more arms and eyes was a good way to show what happens to his arm and eye in iron lung and having a black hole showing graces anger was a good way to show his feelings of loosing his memories despite ascending to God hood

Also bc of the usual designs I had Adrian being sucked into the black hole and the halos essentially being broken just for fun hehe