#tftcs

Hey chat sorry for not posting this is from like a month ago but it won a contest and is now the sever icon on discord in the 2nd image. It’s for Tales from the Crystal Spire. It’s a 16+ dragonrider RP group set in steampunk x fairy-tale floating island setting. It’s planned to be ready by April, so I’ll post a link when it’s ready!

(TeaMarrr)

(TeaMarrr)

   Melissa darted across the street towards where she last saw the strange man, a stern gaze of determination plastered on her face as she charges through the bullet-hell monsoon. Her teeth grin as the powerful wind grabbed at the loose ends of her plastic cloak; at this point the poncho was only a restraint, so the aggravated wizard ripped it off like a layer of plastic skin, it being released and tossed around through the air until the black void of night consumed the vibrant yellow. A group of enforcer-craft soon hovered a few blocks back, most likely where they’d meet up with Lynn.    “Dammit!” Melissa shouted, determination and anger inflating her vocal chords. “VAAUBAN. SHOW YOURSELF.” She took a firm stand in the one-lane alley, foot stomping in a puddle, its wet contents splashing against her boot. Melissa balled her fists as a thin aura of purple engulfed her outline, yet despite its lack of thickness, the color was extremely opaque and potent, almost radiant. Her steps slowed; the sound of an opposing sprint coming to a halt. Her irises hadn’t change color, but rather, they had multiplied. Between the magician’s naturally-colored green eyes and her blackened pupils sat a thin ring. It was exactly the same as her aura: thin and opaque. As she slowly strolled north, a metal door to her left gave the tiniest creek, but this was still a conformation for the young woman. She aimed a hand at the door, opened it, and squeezed it once more. The staple-shaped emergency handle was crushed under the weight of Melissa’s magical power, the door being pried off from its upper hinge with extreme ease.    The sounds of wet, hard-sole boots clack against the concrete surface beneath and the door is aggressively slammed shut, a crack in the gate’s top barely revealing the outside world. It was pitch black, well, aside from the small amount of light Melissa’s body had been shining with. While her aura was a bold shade of light purple and could easily be seen from a distance, it still failed at acting as a colored flashlight. The man lunges up from behind one of the many metallic containers, a makeshift Harbinger pistol in hand. He fires, the charge of electrified plasmic matter brightening up the room with its blue-white energy. Under normal circumstances, a high voltage handgun would’ve been enough to instantly kill an average armorless human, along with sending their body several feet away. However, Melissa merely backhands the dense ball of electrons, sending it into the iron wall to her left, the surface being slightly dented due to the amount of force. She grunts and approaches the man, grabbing him by the shirt collar, the patchy armor over his body in a similar design to the gun; old Harbinger metals, silver and sleet, chipped away at the ends, rusty bolts holding its form together.    “M-Melissa…! W-what brings ya’ around here?” Vaauban forces out a fearful laugh, his artificial eye darting around the room with his biological one. Melissa grunts and tightens her grip, lifting the scrawny man up from the ground, her aura of neon color seemingly thicker as it flutters a white hue. “Gah! Alright-alright-alright! What-do-you-want!?” His voice echoes through the closed shop, they both being concealed in the back room.    “Just what in THE FORERUNNER’S GOD DAMN NAME are you doing here!?” The fist squeezes, leaving Vaauban with barely little air as he’s indirectly choked. “Let me guess, you want to do just what you did to New Harmony? I should just kill you here and now.” The glow outlining Melissa’s unused right arm flames to a point, sharpening to a single, arched end, almost like some kind of elongated sickle of desaturated purple.    “WAIT-WAIT-WAIT!” The old enemy aggressively wiggles and shakes in the wizard’s grasp, afraid for his life. “C’mon, it’s me! Good ol’ Doctor Gallagher!” She cocks back her arm, teeth grinding with hate-filled anticipation. “M-Melissa! We’re both wise Harbinger doctors, surely we can be civil!” The magician looks down, her eyes shaded from what little brightness was in play.    “No… The Vaauban Gallagher I know died a long time ago… You’re no New World Harbinger, you’re a TRAITOR!” The woman swings, but finds her surely-swift movement to be rudely interrupted. The city, no, the whole planet rumbles beneath her feet. She drops the man, then covers her ears as a ping of sound echoes across the world’s atmosphere, masking the sound of enforcer sirens that approached from the distance. “SHIT! I’ve been using it for too long!” Vaauban goes into a sprint for the only remaining door, dashing to get into another portion of the store. Melissa lifts one arm from her head, trembling under pain as she struggles to form a circular barrier around the surviving exit. Her aura of power begins to dissipate, becoming translucent as she becomes ever-more weaker. A sudden burst of plasma stuck the woman along her face, registering her nearly blind.    “Listen Mel, I like you and all, but I’ve got a feeling that if who I think just entered the orbit really is that person, well, they might like you more than me.~” The purple circle fuzzes away, letting Vaauban easily walk right through its once-protective body like mere fog. “I know your weaknesses; no vision, no grasp over your power. Now if you’ll just hand over the Shard, well, I’ll be on my merry way.~” He extends his free hand, HV-Handgun still being tightly kept in the counter. Despite the clear threat against her very own life, Melissa takes the situation quite oddly. Chuckles leave the downed woman’s maw as she looks up with a pair of beady, useless eyes.    “V, you’re pretty dumb for a doctor; you know that?” The metal door that had been previously broken was met with powerful kicks from the reverse side, leading to a sudden jump from the man. “I have two friends with me. One’s a self-trained comissionist, and the other a retired Nullifier unit, so I’d get a move-on.~” Vaauban growls from the extensive pool of fury that found its way inside of him.    “This won’t be the last time you’ll see me Melissa!” The scientist makes a break for the only free door, his broken, Harbinger armor clattering as the metal opening slams shut. Just as the criminal makes his escape, Davy’s robotic fist impacts on the opposing side of the sealed gate, sending the sheet of metal flying across the room. As the door is punched-in, the captain lunges forward, most likely from the abrupt amount of abnormal thrust that her extremedy generated. Behind her are Lynn and several Enforcers, some human, some not. Their armor is decorated with colors of deep blues, along with multiple tints of yellow and gold. In their arms are multiple same-modeled Impact Blast Cannons, assault rifle-esque machine guns that work more with strength and raw force, rather than the electronic pulse that Vaauban’s HV-Handgun had to offer.    “Haha! I did it!” Davy poses atop the collapsed wall piece, her legs both split, one taking a knee and the other extended while her metal arm held down against it’s abused surface. The shaking becomes evermore violent, causing the redhead pirate to collapse down onto her knees. “Okay, look. We gotta’ getta’ move-on, now!”    “Davy’s right! Listen, I have NO IDEA what in the world’s goin’ on here, but we need to go, NOW.” Lynn leans over and tightly grabs Melissa’s wrist, lifting her from the ground like a fallen soldier, her synthetic palm reassuring to the blinded female. “Wait…” Suddenly, the rampant shaking ceases. All is quiet in the city as thousands of flying cars all rest on the ground, the portion of the city that the protagonists have found themselves in not as empty as it once was. Davy, Lynn, and Melissa, along with the group of Enforcers all exit the structure with haste, the police heading in the direction in which Vaauban evaded. The three remaining trying to see just where the boom of sound originated from through the metal hedges that made the urban setting. Nothing. All was quiet.    Another forceful shockwave suddenly juts out from Hammerspace, followed by one of the largest spacecrafts that any of them has ever seen, something that they have only seen few times before. The ship was ridiculous in size, taking up nearly the entire sky as a fleet surrounds it. Hundreds, possibly thousands of Vanguard frigates blip into existence around the colossal beast.    “Is that…” Melissa begins to speak, still being able to see the gigantic foreign object due to its shear magnitude, even with terrible vision.    “The Hammerhead Conclave…” Lynn finishes, staring up with an open, white-pupiled eye. She stares in a masked awe; the Hammerhead was a Vanguard ultimate-class ship- one of only three in existence. “Does this mean-”    “HELL YEAH!” Davy shouts down the corridor-like streets, her excited voice echoing for an undistinguishable distance. “Brother’s here!” Triumphant, childish laughs escape the bold woman as her hands straighten and raise into the air, almost as if her new idol’s mere entrance is something to party about. Suddenly, the air heated up and everything slowed down, coming to a complete halt after ten seconds or so. Melissa looked to her left and right, jumping at how time had come to a seamless stop before her. An orange orb flew over from the invisible half of the hammerhead, it heading right towards the young wizard. Directly in front of her the figure landed, its torso twisting and rotating before falling to a knee, the other leg propped up with a hand held against its upper portion. The glow faded, leaving Brother in its place. He looked up towards the mobile Melissa, his singular eye scanning her body as his thick, orange aura pulsated. The many grooves in his metallic wires also pumped with the fluid-esque substance.    “So.” His voice boomed through the soundless city as he honed in on the singular human. “Looks like I was right.” He stares and speaks in a flattened tone, clearly disappointed, whether in the woman or himself seemingly unknown.    “W-what’s going on here!? Why has everything just stopped all of a sudden!?” The tiny, frightened organic began to panic, darting over from object to object for a quick, yet deep inspection on any kind of mobility.    “Ahh… So you’re unaware of the Armaments’ properties… Allow me to explain. My crew had managed to detect a small, sudden eruption of Lunar Polarity coming from this exact location. We had a hunch that it couldn’t have been Sister, well, that was until the source of energy grew to unholy proportions…” Melissa stops running, looking up to the crouched Sapient as his soft, British tone explained with melancholy.    “Dammit Vaauban!” Her hands became fists along the purple robe that she bad been baring, only to be stammered in her tracks. “Wait, so why exactly is everything frozen?”    “... The Armaments have time-based powers, as you would probably know. This allows those powerful enough to have some control over time, the more of the Armament, the slower they can change progression. Despite this, all who have a Shard are in relative time with the slowdown.” His upper eyelid lowers, its left and right corners lifted higher than the center as his right arm lifts and extends, palm up. “Give me the Shard that you bare, and we’ll pretend that you didn’t steal and use a military superweapon. Fair?” He sits with little movement, leaving Melissa time to observer her own, much smaller appendage. A small piece of some strange, otherworldly symbol fizzles into her hand from Hammerspace, it being the blue shrapnel that the High General desired. “I don’t care that I’m Vanguard and you’re Harbinger; we both hate our enemy just as much, so help me keep her from gaining this power.” Brother’s eye turned back into its uninterrupted shape, a luminescent, red circle of compassion and sympathy.    “...” Melissa stared at the floating object as it dropped into her fleshy palm, looking like nothing more than an old piece of metal that had been ripped from vehicular disposal. It was tiny, but the amount of power that could be siphoned from its depths was unimaginable. “No.” She boldly claimed, the end of her limb now clenching back whole with the piece of hardened material protected in the confines of her fingers. “Listen, I can understand why you’d want this, but I’ve kept this Shard of Luna protected for three years. Even though Sister wants my friends and I, Nemesis will surely be back for Davy’s blood, and without any Shards, we won't be able to stop her.” Eyes lift up from the unphased road, Melissa now looking dead into the godly robot’s visionary orb with her own. “If handing this over means risking my friends’ lives… Well I refuse to just hand this over. Kill me if you need to, but keeping my friends, my family, my Davy… It means keeping them safe.” Her chest swells with a huge breath, the sound of air leaving through her nose being the only audio left to leave the human. She was scared, possibly even horrified! Brother could easily kill her if he wanted to, and could definitely get away with it. However, he merely closes his eye and lowers his hand, a sigh of both disappointment and fatherliness escaping from his metallic, energy-making lungs.    “McGregor. During the war, I wished nothing but your very demise; all Vanguard did. I’m well aware of who you really are, even if your friends aren’t. But I believe that your intentions are true, and while saying this breaks literally every single line that I’ve been told to follow…” The eye opens, well-relaxed accompanied by a gentle sound of relief. “I’m actually going to trust you. But if you lose your Shard of Luna, or anything happens to your accomplices… the punishment will be most severe. Am I understood?” She simply stares down at the item, taking half a minute just to look back up at the superior force of nature. A smirk dawns upon her face, closed lips and a thankful look meeting the High General, followed by a reassuring nod of the head.    “Yes Sir, but let’s agree to keep this a secret, alright?”    “Agreed.”

   The pair of old rivals fizzle into existence on the familiar concrete path, leading up to their local comissionary office. Davy slumped over, her arms straightened out and carelessly hanging in front of her arched body. Her mouth was flattened, bordered with a puffed-up cheek, along with a pair of unamused squints. Melissa, on the other hand, seemed to have a decent amount of tranquility with the given scenario. Her left palm rested against the Captain’s right shoulder, curving atop its bold frame with relaxation apparent. They both casually walked forward as colored particles seeped into existence, the colors matching with the corresponding pieces of matter that they conjoined to form.    “But Melissaaaaa…! We need s’me adventure! You know Lynn wouldn’ mind a god fight…!” Davy pouted like a child, her head tilting to the side to angle towards her comrade, though, refused to directly face the woman. Because of her posture, Davy was roughly the same height of Melissa, a rare occurrence between the two, even if for trivial reasons.    “Listen, Davy. We both know that Lynn was a soldier, but I really don’t think-” The wizard speaks, her tone more compassionate than during the two’s usual banter; she understood Davy’s reasoning, but simply disagreed with it. She was soon disproven, though, as a humanoid figure lunged out from the depths of the colossal structure’s secondary opening.    “HUSHWA!” The uniformed woman leaped out from the slammed-open door, palms both flattened and eyelid in an angered position as she repeatedly choppied in all directions away from the building. “Who goes there!?” The grey suit seemed to lock-up some of the bot’s movements, but she didn’t seem to be too distracted by it. Lynn giggles and relaxed herself, post becoming more offhand as she strided over towards the two humans. “Heh, it’s all good huns, just wish you two tried to call me sooner!    “Lynn!” The pirate escaped her ride’s grasp and eagerly lunged towards the metal-hooded machine, tackling the 5’10 robot onto the ground. Davy’s hugging was aggressive, becoming tighter like a gleeful snake that has caught its prey during the perfect mood. The former soldier collapsed with her customer, choking and flailing around her limbs as the human choked her with platonic love. Melissa stood there and merely tapped her sharp chin, engrossed with the duo’s strange actions. The sun soon settled behind the skyscrapers in the distance, a shadow being casted across the stone-and-metal ground that they resided on through the various trees and small garden that surrounded the government-made facility. The wizard extended her right arm, purple veins bulging out from Davy’s arms and legs as she’s lifted into the air by an unseen force. The tall human aggressively wiggles and shakes her limbs, though, it powerless as she’s tossed to the side like a sheet of paper.    “You alright?” Melissa stands next to the robotic female as she regains her senses, eventually getting back onto her feet by grabbing at the offered hand’s wrist. Lynn hoists herself back up, giving the purple-hatted human a nod.    “Yeah, I’m doin’ pretty good. Well let’s just skip the introductions; it’s gettin’ pretty dark. The two look over towards the quickly-falling star in the distance, orange and red being cascaded through the darkened turquoise sky. Seconds pass, eventually feeling like minutes as the sun pulls their focus. Davy finally hops back up, laying on her back before cocking her knees and leaping from the ground like a frog. The pirate stands between her smaller comrades, arms around their shoulders as she joins the view.    “... What’re we lookin’ at?” Davy asks the pair, head flipping back and forth until she receives any kind of response. Lynn breaks the gawking as she walks over towards the parking lot, arms straightened and stretched over her manufactured head. The electronic organism casually removes her suit, revealing a mechanical body beneath, loaded with metallic plates and red joints that make up her form.    Lynn hops into the drivers-side of her hovercar , something much smaller than a normal ship, not to mention that they can’t leave planetary atmosphere without being docked in a larger craft. It was a decent car; the rigid, box-like shape of it countered the sleek shape of modern hovercars. She fanned to the two humans from the left side, waving back at them from the diagonally across the lot. Davy aggressively jumps in through the open, right-side window, taking the seat next to her old enlister. She did comply with the law and protected herself with a seat belt, but was flopped-over and definitely not in any kind of safe position. Melissa invited herself into the back seats, not putting on her own straps.    “Seatbelts everybody!” Lynn calls, Melissa soon follows with a rhetorical question to herself.    “Please, just let this be a normal trip.” While it may not be the response she wanted, the wizard was sharply answered by her homeowner.    “With Lynn? No way!” The two receive a light smack against the top of their heads, the driver’s eye half-masked by its lid out of a bashless matter.    “Put’cho seatbelts on and stop whining.”    The hovercar zooms by through the dense, summer air. A whirl of air follows the vehicle as it effortlessly enters triple digits on the speedometer, of course, they were high enough in the air to where a structural collision was impossible. The car was perfectly pressurized, letting the trio of women sit comfortably in the transportive machine. Davy reclined back, hands resting behind her head as her legs crossed and laid onto the car’s dashboard. Lynn held one hand on the wheel, the elbow of her unused right arm propped atop the compartment that was lodged between the two front seats. Melissa sat in the back, slightly annoyed at the twist of events. She should have expected this, but those expectations may have been twisted in the heat of her sympathy with the Captain. The nature below was eventually replaced by metallic pylons, each becoming larger than the last and more abundant in numbers, ultimately becoming a full-on city after a few minutes.    “So none o’ya girls could have worn anything special tonight?” Lynn sarcastically questions the two as their movement slows, her eye continuing to remain focused on the glass panel protecting them from the elements.    “Well, we did come along to get some clothes.~” Melissa smirks at the opportunity to give a snarky remark, chuckles escaping her maw as she leans forward between the two chairs.    “Yeah, not ‘t mention that you don’ even wear any clothes!” Davy flopped herself away from the seat, her hands automatically retracting back towards her sides while her legs fell back to the carpeted car floor. Lynn responds to the tag-team with a motherly giggle and a roll of the eye. The car eventually came to a halt as it floated towards the streets below. Over long distances, cars were used to travel at extreme speeds to cross long distances, only to enter the unified roads that were paved onto the surface between the buildings, making the drive seem much more relaxed. They eventually came to a stop; the only visible cars being the ones that zoomed by from hundreds of feet in the air.    “Are you sure this is a good place to be in the middle of the night?” Rain began to fall from the sky as Melissa asked her driver in a worried tone.    “Oh relax Mel! Lynn’s a soldier-bot! And less not forget that’chu’ve got the best pirate in the galaxy with ya’.~” Davy grins and shows off her golden canine while flexing-out her fully-biological arm, the other two starring with a lack of amusement.    “Yeah… Listen hun, we’ll be fine. Look, there should be some ponchos in the back. Wanna pop us out some?” Lynn lifts her left arm and points towards the back of the seats where the wizard resided. Melissa pulled on one of the straps along the top of the left-side seat, it falling down to reveal the vehicle’s trunk. She grabs a trio of, as expected, yellow ponchos. The three soon slip on their equipment and head out into the rain, Melissa only worried more than before now that they’re more-visible targets than prior. Davy and Lynn were right though, they should be fine.    Lynn locked her doors as they all stood in the watering air, everyone’s skin well-protected and hidden by the colored cloaks. They began to walk down the street, most of the shops without light and closed for the night. The magician looked back and forth across the street as her hostess and landlord carelessly walked down the large sidewalk.    “Hmm. Maybe they’re closed… Oh wait!” The automaton sprinted down the street towards a fully-lit store that had been sitting around the next corner. Melissa stopped at the window of a shop directly to her left. Several televisions had all been placed behind the cover and were displaying the local news, their everyday-4k resolution making the video seem ultra-clear, though, the smudges on the glass didn’t do any favors. On the monitors, the two anchors reported news of some random local criminal, one eye normal human, another blue and artificial.    “A blue eye? Last time I checked, that was only a Harbinger aesthetic…” The purple-clothed woman got closer, captivated by the TVs and their knowledge. Unfortunately, she was quickly yanked away by a familiar, red-headed figure.    “C’mon Melissa! Lynn found the place!” The witch was carelessly pulled along like a plastic bag as her acquaintance charged through the low-breeze air, their angle causing her face and glass to be aggressively pelted with droplets of water. The two stop as they drift around the corner, Lynn sitting against the side of the building and looking ahead, hand under her chin. “Somethin’ wrong?” Davy curiously asks, releasing the magical female as she attends to the bummed-buddy.    “Yeah… They just forgot to turn off the lights, somehow. Well, you guys jus’ wanna hang out another time?” Davy smirks and takes a seat next to her mechanical buddy, then begins to forcefully pat her back.    “It’s all good! Time an’ stuff.” Melissa takes a seat all the way to the right, placing her right beneath the store’s large panels of glass. She gives a closed-mouth smile, her lips’ ends peaking up to comfort the Sentient bot. However, she quickly jumps in place from what sounds like metal hitting a floor. Her eyes open and mouth flattens; the other two also seemed to be alerted of the audio.    “Did you guys hear that!?” The unhatted magic-woman loudly whispers to her pair of colleagues. However, their focus was once-again yanked away from the sound of a fourth voice.    “DAMMIT!” He shouts as more sounds of falling metal come from within the supposedly-closed store, sirens now going off from the commercial building. A blue light aims towards the window above, it becoming smaller, brighter, and more intense as footsteps become closer. Eventually, a bag-holding figure leaps out through the large panel of glass directly above the crouched Melissa, causing her to duck in cover. He turns to the left and begins sprints the moment contact is made with the concrete, not even noticing the trilogy of females that had all been planted right next to the quick-made exit. They stood and quickly ran after him, wet glass cracking between the females’ feet.    “Hey! Wait!” Melissa shouts as they pass several structures, right arm extending as she prepares to build a barrier out of purple light. However, the figure quickly make an abrupt turn down an alley to the left. “Lynn, you go wait back at the shop when the enforcement unit arrives! Davy, grapple over the building and cut this guy off! I’m gonna chase him.” Lynn nods and turns around, running back away from the conflict.    “You got it!” Davy lifts her metal arm, its hand quickly shooting off as she flings herself over the top of the few-story buildings. Mel ran faster, only to be cut off by the jacket-wearing man as he stood right around the corner. Both of their faces were masked by hoods and shadow, causing the man to draw a blade out of defense.    “Get back!” The mysterious criminal shouts, thrusting the blade towards the woman as intimidation, leading her to back against the wall. Her eyebrows crouch at their inner portions, sharpening to a V-shape. Melissa’s right hand opens as the man forces it to the wall, his own holding the melee weapon to her esophagus. His exposed hand soon fills with luminescent veins, it being pushed away with the woman’s voodoo-like magic. Her arm extends and the stranger is painfully bashed back into the opposing wall, his blue left eye zinging in brightness from the sudden impact. A sudden gust of wind blows through the crevice between the two structures, causing the man’s hood to fly over his head and for Melissa’s poncho to flap in the wind. They stop dead in their tracks, both now gawking at one another out of sheer disbelief.    “Melissa?” The blue-eyed man asks, the two sockets widened in awe as he was slowly released from the woman’s grasp.    “Vaauban?” She asks in return, a similar emotion blazed onto her face, ignoring the huge concentrations of water that form over her glasses. Her hold dissipates and the two hold gazes. The stranger slowly backs away, the bag of money left on the ground. They continue to stare, only until Vaauban turns away to frantically escape is their vision broken. Melissa continues to peer at the man as he ultimately leaves sight, her broken mind not caring as the poncho violently flaps in the powering-up wind. Her dominant hand balls up into a fist as her teeth grind together, only for her to soon chase after the strange man at full-force, plowing through the violent air.    “Sorry Davy, but I’m not letting the ghosts of my past escape too!”

   The pair make way back towards the top of the stairs, Melissa wrapped under Davy’s biological wing as the two laugh between themselves. The taller woman’s grasp was light, less than loving and more friendly than anything, like a loose belt that only serves the purpose of security. Behind them, the basement door is flung shut by the captain’s leftmost leg, snorting due to her purple-dressed companion’s sarcastic humor. They’re eventually greeted by the hubroom once more, their constant sounds of elation finally ceasing with a pair of heavy sighs. They stop walking once the previous arch is met, Jessie and Elo turning back to question the odd noise combination.    “Jeez, what’re you two laughing about?” The short man turns back his head, looking back over the couches cushion as his left arm weighed down atop it. His tone was just as dulled as one would expect, though, his conversation with the twoish-week recruit had gifted the man with some subtle simpering beneath the careless speech.    “Well~” Davy begins to speak, Melissa happily waiting against her side. Her hand bent back as its tips pressed against the red-heads grey undershirt near her collarbone, eyes closing as she spoke with a complacent lip. “Mel has agreed t’ come along with me ‘nd Lynn~”    One of Elo’s synthetic mitts gently caresses the thin sheet of metal that cased-in the lower portion of his head, red eye squinted from both top and bottom.    “You know…” His slightly-wheezy voice began to replace that of Jessie’s while his hand released the technical chin. The hand balled up and pointed at the two females as his lids raised, the higher of the two virtually vanishing from sight. “You two really look like a couple~!” A high titter made escape from the bot’s artificial voice box, his grey-handed point failing to leave sight.    “Ah-” The two women staggered in the moment, both of their faces popping into an ultra-intense blush as their pupils vanished from existence, only to leave their large whites. A moment in time passed at the duo reboot themselves, only to eagerly break grasps and hop away like a pair of disgusted children.    “Ew-ew-ew!” The opposites bent at their knees and straddled over the air, each wiping off their portions of clothing that had been grazing together, both tilting towards the opposing sides of the hall while refusing to press against said surfaces. “Gross-gross!” Their emotions were the same, eyes tightened as they rubbed off the imaginary stains of compassion like a grandmother’s kiss. A few long seconds pass by before the females recover, Melissa having to cross her arms from the supposed lack of amusement while Davy leaned against the ship’s side, arm going up at an extremely-obtuse angle in a sly stance.    Elo sat in place as the two women acted like youthful minors, his gaze of semi-sarcastic glee now replaced with an awkward pace from side-to-side. He looks over to Jessie, hand still in the same position. The two exchange glances, then resume watching the two females.    “Oh! Miss Davy! I need to show you something!” The droid mantles over the side of the couch, barely keeping himself from falling face-first against the rigid floor before sprinting off to the basement. Mere moments later, Elo emerges from the depths, a strange device being held in both hands. The three humans turned to face the engineer as he quickly returned, making sure to not drop his precious tool. “Miss-Davy…! I…!” The air-needing bot wheezed from a lack of oxygen that he could convert to energy, causing his body to tilt down, both palms still held-up with the odd mini-machine in both. The invention was oddly shaped, as if it was designed around the contours and folds on Davy’s ears, an extra ear-bud communications device being set at the center of it, only revamped with a volume dial. The thinner portions of the machine were ribbed with various small buttons, each being sensitive enough to detect a push while not needing much force. “Ahem… I took a look at one of your extra communicators while you brought the ship to New Harmony, and would be honored if you tried it…” The captain eyed-down the decently-sized creation--it was larger than her current communicator after all.    “Uhh, alright!” Davy smiled and popped out her current communicator, the small, pill-shaped bud dropping into her right palm as it was uncorked from the ear of the same side. She popped the new device where the old one once was, the bands of plastic material being quite snug under their respective folds of skin.    “I made sure to include 12 buttons, that way you won’t have to remove the device from your ear just to swap out its audio channel like the old one.” The bot hunched over and held his wrists together, hopeful that his employer appreciated the home-made item. “I’ve also pre-installed all of the crew’s caller IDs, so you won’t need to set it up!”    “Hmm… Not ba-” A sudden force of sound infiltrated the woman’s head, a four-noted ringtone looping over and over as it aggressively attached her hearing drum. She fell on her side and palmed-down the device, foaming from the mouth like a rabid animal. Elo jumped and his eye shrunk, him falling onto his knees right after. The tinkerer gently took hold of the knob that protruded from the centerpiece, the volume quickly decreasing. Davy blinked and closed her mouth, swallowing the remaining quantity of substances that gassed from her maw. She turns over onto her rump, then moves her chest up. “Hey, not bad~!” A large smile overcame her face as she pressed down on the tight volume-knob, the call being received.    “Captain!” Jevvin spoke to his commander from the bridge, ready to finally take to the stars. “The drive is loaded and operational, just give me the word and we’ll in hammerspace!” His hand gripped the large lever that was positioned on the right-side of the control panel, preparing to pull it back.    “You’re good t’ go!” Jevvin pulled back on the switch as his superior gace the order, leading to the ship beginning to rumble and accelerate, the stars in the sky all being stretched out to lines as the were pulled into the sub-dimension. Spikes of color all sharpened out from each character, all of which shared the same pigment of the item they were attached to, and had all been facing the exact direction in which they had made the jump. The red-head stood on her feet, letting the puffy dreadlocks that crowned her cap cover the new communicator as she stretched.    “We should be at the correct dropezone in a few minutes, I’ll tell ya’ when we get there.” The two-way call ended, Davy being notified by a single low-tone beep.    Elo hopped in excitement and made haste down the left hallway, taking a right at the end down a long, curved hall. The corridor was decorated with an extremely lengthy set of trapezoid-shaped windows, all peering out into the void of hammerspace. It was an infinitely blank sea of neverending white. Despite the dull repetition, Elo seemed quite contempt with the view. Davy, Melissa, and Jessie soon followed, they being lined in the same order, taking views from the adjacent ports.    “Why’re you so excited?” Jessie asked his young colleague, still looking out into the colorless mass.    “I’ve spent all my life as a ship engineer and a tinkerer; just because I make ships doesn’t mean I fly them, so seeing hammerspace in action is a rarity! The primary captain’s flat mouth tilted at an angle as she inspected the emptiness, both hands resting on her confused sides.    “I mean, it’s cool ‘nd all, but we go ‘ere a lot. Actually, Elo, jus’ how does hammerspace work again? You are a ship-maker aft’r all.” She turned her head to face the fellow one-eyed worker, her simple mind curious for answers.    “Well, hammerspace isn’t exactly teleportation, as time and distance still progress here. The thing is though, hammerspace’s time is an extreme ratio to our universe’s, so in our dimension it appears as teleportation. Distance is also vastly different; hundreds of years worth of flying there can be done in mere minutes here!” The captain blankly stares, her mind dead as it tried to process just what exactly the knowledgeable military-bot answered her with.    “So… It’s kinda like email versus regular mail?”    “If that’s how you want to describe it.”    The four all blanked their minds, observing the interdimensional highway as various ships all flew by, the sound of heated hovers whizzing by their own craft. As their craft made its way farther and farther from the team’s initial entrance into hammerspace, the colored spikes that grew from them extended, still focusing on their entrance like a series of compasses.    “Something about it seems… Oddly hypnotic…” Melissa’s prints made contact with her thick window, mind being pulled away. “It’s like staring at a fish tank…”    “Well.” Jessie began. “Hammerspace is a lot like water, more like an ocean than the universe we’re usually in. Davy taps her chin, seemingly as if she were the least interested out of the bunch.    “So it’s like a sea?” The captain was interrupted as the craft suddenly lurched forward, Elo, Jessie and Melissa managing to stop their collisions with the glass. Davy, on the other hand, just slapped face-first against the thick, newly-replaced sheet of see-through substance, resulting in her face being squished like a slab of gelatinous fat.    “Captain, we’re at the correct coordinates. Shall I make the dive?” The goofy leader pulls her elastic face back from the wall, it being covered in a painless red layer. Her right arm reaches up to the new communicator and clicks the central dial, letting the call come through.    “You are a-ok to make the drop!” The watery substance that fills their transportative space swirls in front of the bow, somewhat-resembling a shallow whirlpool, only without a spiked end. They’re eventually sucked into the portal, the white background becoming more powerful until all sight had been replaced by the resonating flashbang. Streaks of colored light soon come into view around the Homebound, followed by the introduction of the black void that they call space. The speed immediately stops and all color takes form as it should be, a ripple in the universal plane blipping behind the crew as they exit hammerspace. Below sat a familiar world, coated in colossal skyscrapers, some even reaching the planet’s atmosphere. While every building was different, they all had the same general approach; doughnut-shaped rings of metal that surrounded the large, cylindrical towers, some widening and thinning at periodic patterns, some smoother than their hourglass counterparts. Large tectonic plates were made visible by the mass-construction, the gigantic gaps all looking to be ultra-wide rivers of deep blues that blended together. However, there were still huge gardens of nature, reserves that were the size of oceans and sharply bordered like jigsaw pieces. The greens of nature and blues of rivers contoured right with the silvery metals that occupied the city regions.    “Jevvin, fly us to adventure!” Davy strikes a pose, her legs splitting and straightening as her metal hand points down to the world below. Melissa turns her head to face the captain as she stared to the planet with her one red eye.    “Davy, we’re just going shopping.”

   Jessie and Elo both reside in the Homebound’s hubroom, well, it was more of a lounge. They both sat atop the old, red couch that sat near one side, a scrappy TV sat atop the desk against the wall. Jessie’s right arm casually hung over the couch’s own side while he slumped against the old fabric. Elo keeps place with a straightened back, both hands resting right above his knees. They both discussed the topic of what had exactly happened that day, no secrets, no lies. Davy and Melissa, however, both stood against the leftmost arch, it leading into the corridor that harbors both the ship’s side exit and the stairs to the basement.    The captain leaned back against one side of the open corridor, Melissa stood next to the opposing edge of the rim. They both stood and watched their male crewmates conversate.    “Ya’ know… This may be good for ‘em.” Davy’s gaze was almost motherly, despite the fact that Jessie was roughly ten years older than her; she was still the captain after all.    “What do you mean?” The wizardly scientist gently rotated her head, now looking directly up at her frenemy’s face. Her gaze was not returned by the captain, but she did receive a serene response.    “Well, I’unno really. Somethin’ about Jessie jus’ seems… More light hearted than usual. He’s always this bold, lis’less dude, but he’s been a lot more op’n lately, ya’ know?” Melissa turns back towards the two men, her face not changing as they both exchange a laugh.    “Hm. Maybe you’re right.”    Jevvin walks out from the central hallway, it being between the other two. He was enjoying a ham sandwich, so it was no random guess that he had just left the kitchen. His footsteps gently patted against the floor under worn boots.    “Yo J!” Davy gently called out to the dark-skinned man, causing him to stop his movement. The floor gently squeaked under his last step, him having to stop eating as he looked over to address the ship’s owner.    “Uhh, yes Captain?” His arms lowered, the sandwich still being gripped along the crust by both of his organic appendages.    “Do me a fav’r and go fly us back to New Minerva, wouldja?” He nods and walks back down the corridor, taking another chomp from his snack.    “Davy, can I ask you something?” Melissa turns herself to face the taller woman, the other turning as well.    “Sure!” The wizard is approved by a thumbs-up from her technical-captain’s scratched, grey forearm.    “Well, I backtracked through Observant's files and was wondering… Just what’s between you and Nemesis?” Davy’s pondering expression soon blanks out, it becoming more emotionless than anything. She releases a sigh into the air before looking down to her feet.    “Alright, I’ll give ya’ some hindsight, but first we sh’ld go somewhere more private.” The smaller female reassures her counterpart with a nod and begins a small walk. Her cleaned shoes clack and tap against the old wooden planks beneath them. The two are eventually find themselves amongst a familiar door, that door being the same one that leads down to the lower hull.    “I figured you might want to watch some of these.” Melissa carefully steps down the wall-attached staircase, being sure to step over its variously-sized cracks and splinters as Davy follows close behind. They arrive beneath the spaceship’s waterline, the sound of creaking ending as the two step onto the dusty metal base. The tapping of hard materials greeted the pair’s ears, their hard soles clattering against the concrete-esque platform with every step. Melissa treads towards the large electronic computer that sat along the opposing wall to their entrance, having to navigate around the large, heavy hammerdriver that took the length of the room. A group of plastic, four-legged tables were carelessly strewn around the device, each holding home to many of Elo’s tools and devices, all having indescribable complexity in their detailed forms. At the right end of the machine stood Davy, on the opposing side Melissa.    “So, Mel. Jus’ what exactly do ya’ wanna know?” The captain’s tone was nearly dead in emotion, her bright eye looking down at the wizard behind a half-sealed eyelid. Her arms cross and her mouth remains lifeless, bold, serious. Melissa returns her homeowner’s hospitality with a soft sigh, now looking up to her old somewhat-of-a-rival with unrested eyebags, their skin folded from stress.    “Well… How long have you known each other…? What were you two?” The two looked up towards the ceiling, both briefly distracted by loud footsteps overhead. Their heads look back down after seconds pass, realigned in the conversation. “And more specifically… Just why have you not told anyone else?” The wizard’s lightly-shaking eyes peered up at the one-eyed woman, but didn’t focus on her singular orb.    “Jeez… I’ll jus’ cut things short…” Davy looks back up at the ceiling as the salty bitterness of memory leaks from the lower portion of her eye, giving it a pain-induced shine, yet no tears streak from the duct. “Nemesis and I hav’ been long-time acquaint’nces… We both woke up on the bott’m of that floor… Neither of us remembered a thing. We were both without eye and memory, me missin’ a forearm. F’r almost two whole years, we were the only things we knew. We knew nothing aside what was alre’dy in our heads. I took part in a bit of fictional writing; she was more inta sciency stuff, programming and such. I didn’t wanna talk about it ‘till now ‘cause there was no evidence, nothing to make a claim with…” The pirate gently grabs at the upper arm of her right side and looks down to the rustic console, peering directly at the wide core socket that had been built in, as most military-grade computers had. She stares at the lighted cylinder, seconds passing as her emotions subtly formed, a small tear dragging its way down her cheek. “I didn’t want to leave her, but… I just…” A sudden force pressured against the fragile woman’s body, a pair of armed robes wrapped around her body. Melissa had pulled her rival into a comforting hug, her cheek pushed between Davy’s collarbone.    “Don’t tell anyone about this, alright?” The wizard’s covered eyes closed as she lightly nuzzled into the larger woman, the movements only noticeable if attention was given. The red-head sighs as a gentle, warm smile resonated upon her face, hand gently reaching to caress and comb the witch’s soft, lavender hair. Davy’s eyes close as she rests her chin amongst the top of the scientist’s tall cap, giving it a decently-sized dent. The two exchange a light giggle before parting ways, both of their minds now filled with a sudden optimism. “Listen, Davy. Everyone here cares about you, after all you’ve done for us… You’re the most thoughtful person that I know, and I hate to see you so…” A fleshy finger squishes into the smaller woman’s mid-lip, causing her speech to be halted. Davy stared down with a widened sneer, a soft cackle escaping her mouth.    “Heh, you know I’m not one for sappy stuff, so jus’ stop it there. Confronting my ghosts won’t be easy, but this helps. Howev’r, I don’ think Nemesis is our biggest threat anymore…” Her tone begins to lower once more, becoming more mute and weak. Melissa, however, distracts her counterpart with a smug grin and a loud chuckle.    “Well, here’s an Idea. Lynn said that she wants to go chill and spend some time with you; you two have known each other for quite some time after all. Maybe I can freeload off the two of you and come with~?” Davy returns the smug gaze with her own, eyes squinted and mouth raised as she gives the woman a bonk on the hat.    “Do ya’ really think I got the clicks to be buyin’ you stuff? I was jus’ hopin’ to mooch offa’ Lynn!” The bonk and emote were rebounded by the opposition, Melissa giggling like a child as she does so.    “Leave it to a pirate to mooch off of someone with an actual job~”    “Leave it to a wizard to mooch offa’ moocher~” The two exchanged one last set of giggles as they headed back towards the steps, Melissa remembering to get the final remark.    “But seriously, I have no money.”

   “So…” Davy stammered, having to look down and back up to reassess her thoughts. “...Are we gonna tell Brother ‘bout Observant?”    A set of listless footsteps make way to the thick exit, Melissa clearly sought out on exiting the scene, hands wrapped around each other behind her back.    “Are you serious…?” She turns her head to peer at the captain who she’s been freeloading off from for oh-so long, her previous objective now counteracted by such a naive question. “Davy, you want to find Nemesis, right? Who’s to say that the Vanguard will actually keep us involved. If we tell them about Observant, they’d most-likely try to confiscate our only lead!” The wizard’s body slowly turns, one foot moving around the other to let her form rotate a full 180 degrees. Her eyebrows are flat beneath their glass covers and her back stays straightened. “No videos. No lead. No Nemesis.”    Dav’s highest desire was to speak, her fleshy index finger already extended and mouth open, however, another idea had approached the young mind, overthrowing the last.    “I mean, of course! But... why do you care? What’d you have t’ gain?”    “I-” Melissa’s body refused to move as she pondered; she didn’t even know herself! Her once-relaxed eyes both twitched open open, the silence followed by a radiant blush. “I- I just think that you pirates could use someone as great as me!” Her arms cross tighter than before and eyes shut completely, head turning away as she throws the taller female aloof. The room is met with an awkward few-moment silence, it being broken as Jessie flops down into one of the secondary chairs and reclines.    “Welp. If I’m gonna be the kid’s handbook then I ain’t driving~” The co-captain’s forearms rest behind his head and legs cross as his eyes rest, mouth sneered and pointed along the edges. Melissa jumped at the opportunity, both metaphorically and literally. She took a dive directly at the door and blipped from existence, definately to the laboratory below. Davy holds her previous questioning expression, having to jostle around her head just to become reorientated with time.    “Guess I’m drivin’!” The black-hatted woman reaches over and grips down over the head of the driver’s seat, hoisting herself over like a catapult and dropping down amongst the inviting, cushioned item. Her hands reach towards the wheel, hands grabbing at the various wooden prongs that protrude from its cylindrical body, right hand soon releasing it to crank up the craft’s stick to send them forward. The steampunk-esque boat floats its way through the cosmic emptiness, slowed by the two still-bursted engines. The communications monitor lights up with a loud ring, a basic caller identification displayed across its dirty, reused glass. Upon it flickers a rounded automaton. The woman revealed herself to be none other than Davy’s contractor! A singular eye isn’t exactly the best thing as showing off complicated emotion, but the way that Lynn jostled and shimmied herself around showed that she was definitely unnerved, though, not fearful..    “Lynn!” Davy happily shouts after aiming her vision towards the monitor glance, not really too contempt with focusing on the nonexistent road due to its lack of, well, anything.    “Davy! Just what in the Forerunner’s name is going on!? It’s supposed to be the middle of the night and all of a sudden the whole planet lights up like some kind of supernova! I tried to call you like, eight times now, but I haven’t been able to connect!” The captain gives a small, sudden hop, quickly rotating her up-most body part back to face her secondary. He givs a relaxed shrug, not really caring too much about the situation, and she turns back, now having to think-up some spontaneous story.    “Oh! Well, uhh… You see, af’er completing our listing… A Vanguard Cruiser flew in ov’rhead! We probably jus’ got caught under their security scramblers or somethin’. As for the lights, I’ve got absolutely no idea whatsoever!” Davy tries to reassure her close friend with a large, shiny smile, the gate of white panels having a hard time imprisoning her faulty lie, to which Lynn just responds with a confused gaze; one side of her eyelid lifted higher than the other.    “Well… Eh, whatever. Anyway, I was hoping we could just hang out sometime; things have been getting pretty hectic around here lately and I need a break.”    “Will do!” Davy looked over to the caller and gave a thumbs-up, a no-mouth smile being returned before the call ends.    Melissa steps back down into the laboratorym chunks and blades of metal scattered all around the floor, the monitor and computer as a whole having to be restarted after the power outage. She approached the beastly device, flicking a lever or two and pushing down on a large button. The system soon resets and the wizard finds herself intertwined with a series of files once more, each video being exactly 24 hours in length, all named by their date taken.    “Hmm…” Thousands of meaningless icons bombard the screen, Melissa having to pass through most of the uninteresting thumbnails of when the daily cycle resets. Many were just black screens, probably from Observant’s power-down sequence, something all droids have to do in order to avoid overheating. She started to get annoyed with the lack of progress as seconds turn to minutes.    Finally, after roughly ten minutes of searching and inspecting, Melissa finally uncovers the very last, or rather first, of the spammed data. The thumbnail is, as expected, a mass of pure black. This had to have been the bot’s very first activation, so something like this was expected, and the only exception on generating distraught.    “Here we are…” The small woman’s tongue slipped out from the side of her mouth as she moves the cursor over to the icon, giving it a pair of determined clicks. The file opens and takes form across the entire screen, a blipping light appearing in the center as it loads.    “Let’s see just what went on here…”    >October 10, 2249: Initial Boot-Up    The monitor glows to life, revealing a large, open structure. Above stood a massive ceiling, both sides curved together to meet at a central line that massed through the entire building’s top, the rounded grooves giving it a small amount of noticeable texture.    “Haha! I’ve done it!” A figure happily walks into Observan’t vision. That short red hair, the puffy bun atop it; this could only have been Nemesis! Her right eye’s eris was a light red, a soft patch of cotton-escue material was bandaged onto her face and covered the other socket. “It’s taken me eight months but I’ve finally done it! Davy, come here!” She looks away to an off-screen figure as she fans over to her, a younger form of the captain herself walking into view. She lacked any kind of hat and her eyepatch was the same as the other female’s, only colored black as opposed to Nemesis’s white.    “Woah…” Davy curiously tapped on the screen, triggering the automaton to reach and gently grab her wrist.    “Please, don’t.” A booming voice overpowered the sounds made by the two humanoids, both of them responding with a small amount of shock.    “Haha! His auditory systems are functional too!” The doctor’s hands clasp together directly in front of her face as her eyes squint shut in extreme joy.    “So Nem, you’re telling me that with only a few spare manuels, you taught yourself how to program a robot? And in just eight months!?” Davy looked over to her partner in awe, both curious and surprised.    “Correct! And what have you been doing all this time; reading that silly book~?” Nemesis chuckles and cocks back an eyebrow, the lids of her eyes moving in a subtle, yet similar matter. Davy blushes and straightens out her body, arms, legs, and back.    “Hey! Pirates are cool!” She lifts up a hardcover kids book, on it being a group of colorfully-drawn pirates atop their ship, its contents being a playful story that gifts her with small insight on just what a ‘pirate’ actually is. Nemesis rolls her singular mechanical eye and snuckers out of satirical sass.    “But Davy! Think about it! We’ve only talked to each other ever since we woke up, we can make a whole society if we wanted!” The doctor’s hands were still gripping against each other’s palms, but her head was tilted up with star-filled eyes.    “That would be cool…”    Observant’s head turns back and forth to each woman, he soon hoisting himself up with his two forearms. The large droid was still laying down against his back-most half, but now had a bit more mobility to his upper portion.    “Speaking of which… Davy, how’s that new arm treating you?” The captain extends her half-mechanical limb, its fingers giving a gentle numb wiggle and not much more.    “Hmm… Kind of hard to control… It’s been helpful on shipwork, though; great for moving things around!”    The automaton turns his head to look towards the open end of the factory’s hangar, in place being a comfy, four-legged spaceship. The runway was flat, the only items left strewn across its surface being the various resources needed to craft the unfinished cruiser.    “Well you better be helpful! You’re the one who wanted to stick with the whole pirate theme~” Davy’s left leg bends and slams against Observant’s laying-desk, her back becoming firm.    “Ahoy ye matey! It be a fine day for some adventure!” Her hand flattens and sits level with her eyebrows as she looks around, lightly roleplaying as if they were a pair of humans out at sea.    Melissa pauses the video and closes the video file, her lips flat and emotionless, but her eyes widened with knowledge. The ship comes to an abrupt halt after slowing down, they were entering the historical site. She could hear the engines slowly power off and lower in tempo ultil they ultimately went silent.The main door opens and metallic footsteps come from above. While the voice was muffled, Elo had began speaking with whoever was up there with him, most likely Davy and some crewmates.    “So, uhh… Wha’d I miss, exactly?”