2018-08-27: A Golem In The Port
- Log: A Golem In The Port
- Cast: Shalune Amira, Loren Voss
- Where: Pendrago - Port District
- Date: August 27th 2018
- Summary: Loren spots an unusual sight in the port, and finally solves a mystery of sorts from the previous year: the identity of a certain young woman and her Golem. ...And the extent of her possibly rather worrying capabilities.
<Pose Tracker> Shalune Amira has posed.
"This place... it's kind of a mess right now, huh?" Shalune mutters to herself under her breath, trying her best to pick her way through the crowds that throng the Port District back towards her stall. There are still many refugees wanting to flee Glenwood's war in the direction of Meribus - unaware that, soon enough, they might wish to be running the other way instead. Between them, she nudges the Little Dipper, climbing for height - because in the end, going over the top of the crowd on a flying scooteris much easier than trying to push through them.
It also makes her a lot more noticable, a shock of pink and red and yellow standing out in the air, but it's not like that was going to be a problem anyway. The makeshift stall she lands at is currently manned by a familiar twelve-foot golem of Veruni architectural style, rusted and pitted with age and yet still able to bear the load of several small children hanging off of it as they play; Shalune pats Big Shal on the side, taking the chance to bolster her own spirit a little. "I'm back. It looks like we might need a little more, so I'm gonna get ready, okay?"
'More' refers to the large pot bubbling away on a campfire stove just behind her. She's never exactly been a particularly formal merchant, her sign advertising junk and repairs and a scrawled-out piece of text that clearly once said 'ARMS', but now that's been mostly-covered by a cloth banner advertising 'FOOD' instead, and the smell of something reasonably hearty - some kind of stew - rising from it.
There's no price attached.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Glenwood had turned into a mess in the time Loren had been up north. While he'd largely stayed off the main roads on his way back -- been lucky that Azazel hadn't seemed to tracking him any (perhaps that encounter had just been a fluke) -- it had been impossible to miss the signs of war... or of those caught in its path fleeing for Pendrago, likely aiming to flee to Meribus.
It's like what he'd seen of the Avev/Kislev conflict back on Filgaia. Those who can't, get out of the way of those who can.
Today, he's only on Pendrago for some recon work (something, he's darkly sure of, that they must have felt even he couldn't mess up) and to make a rendezvous with a local agent -- a delivery for the encampment.
It's almost even a little bit hilarious, when he thinks about it. Started off with commendations, but now...
Just one failure after another. Even command has to see it that way.
So it's to no small shock that he sights the familiar Golem admidst the crowds here in the port.
That's the one from back in Bledavik... and out near Dazil.
And where that Golem is--
There's the 'Golem Rider Girl', as well. He'd known he'd been right. Now, if he can get a name, he--
...If they're stuck up here on the moon, he thinks then, they're not going to care about...
Ever so slightly, his spirits deflate. His shoulders slouch.
Ugh, runs the contradictory thought after that. No. I can't ignore this, even if it's useless. It's better than nothing. And possibly, she might try something again someday...
So it is that he approaches her -- attention briefly stolen by the bubbling stewpot -- and...
Realizes he doesn't precisely have a plan for this. Shalune has gained the attention of one mysterious glasses-wearing blond boy.
"...Hey," he manages, after a moment or two of staring, coupled with a gesture vaguely towards the pot (or maybe the Golem?). "...What is all this? Is it really free?"
Yeah, it was probably the pot.
<Pose Tracker> Shalune Amira has posed.
To be fair, the stew itself is in a refreshingly normal pot - cast iron and incredibly burnt on the bottom, a surefire mark of someone who's used and abused it through dozens of camping trips, but otherwise smelling of potato and herbs. Next to it sits the real prize; made of white metal, the pot-like device has spidery cracks of white light running across it and inside of it as it does its thing, converting a handful of screws into a new ankle joint for Big Shal.
If attuning to her unusual ARM takes a toll on Shalune, she doesn't show it. Bright and upbeat, the mechanic hops from stool to counter in a single go, grinning at the kid from under pink hair and red bobble hat. Dressed for the weather, she's mostly a mess of comfortable clothes and a big ratty yellow scarf, everything well-worn and patched here and there with non-matching colours.
"It's really free," she confirms first and foremost, and softens her smile as she winks. "It's only right to share, isn't it? Ah-- but only one bowl per person, otherwise I'm gonna run out super fast," she adds as she wags a finger. "Also, some of the bowls are pretty bent. Also, I kinda don't have a whole lot of cutlery," Shalune admits further, rubbing at the back of her hair.
Absolutely guileless, she doesn't notice Loren loitering nearby - but she can at least catch the way the kid's attention wavers towards the large figure next to her, and raps lightly on the rounded shape of the golem's body. "Ehehe. And this is Big Shal. She protects me when I'm traveling, but she's really nice, I promise. She's kind of like-- a big statue?" she wonders how to explain it, but shrugs when the golem swivels its head around, brings up an arm, and... offers a creaking and timeworn thumbs up.
The mechanic looks terribly pleased with herself. "So, d'you want some?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
It smells pretty good, as far as he's concerned. Then again, Loren is someone willing to put just about anything edible in his mouth.
Someone of his breeding shouldn't (normally) be interested in surfacer-style food, except...
For one thing, Loren's a young man. For another thing, as a soldier, he has a ridiculously active lifestyle. And for a third thing, ether has its energy needs. Making something out of will alone isn't a free lunch, as it were.
He's almost always a little bit low-key hungry.
So, even if it's just one per person, in a dented bowl, and with questionable utensils, he's never been one to turn down free food.
"It's fine," and that statement alone probably makes it one of the kinder things Loren's said to someone else in some time.
Obviously, though, it's the Golem that caught his eye first and still retains his attention. When she pats it, his gaze leaps from it to her. "A big statue," he repeats, cradling a dented bowl in his right hand.
"Hmph. Well, that's certainly apt. And no one here minds it?"
Maybe the sorcerors around here often summon servitor beings. Or maybe they're willing to give anything a blind eye these days, with everything that's going on.
...He can see a few of the people in the crowd are not entirely human, anymore.
Malevolence drenches the city in spots, pooling but not entirely coagulating into something worse for the denizens.
"...Sure. What did you say your name was?"
<Pose Tracker> Shalune Amira has posed.
The mechanic serves up the bowl without fuss, and true enough she doesn't ask for a penny's payment. "Here!" she adds as she presents it forward, paired with a bright smile. "I'm not the best ever cook compared to Lunie, but I like to think I'm pretty good when it comes to using what I've got." As she says, it's not exactly fancy... but Shalune wasn't going for haute cuisine given the situation. Heavy on the vegetables, it's warm and filling, and she clearly decided that was what was important right now.
"Ah, well-- yeah, I guess not?" the mechanic grins sheepishly as she rubs at her hair, the expression of someone who's used to being at least a little happy-go-lucky about things. "Sometimes people complain a little, sure, but Big Shal wouldn't hurt a fly. She's real handy when it comes to big jobs, too, so it's pretty easy for her to help out. When that avalanche nearly hit Zulan she was able to help reinforce the barrier, and put up a bunch of temporary shelters. Kinda tends to hush people up real quick."
"Besides!" she adds as a brace of particularly adventurous boys manage to clamber their way up to the top gantry by going straight up the golem, rather than using the ladder on its back; they cheer, and Big Shal accepts their victory with a stoic sort of nod as Shalune grins brightly. "Would you really kick them all off? She's like a moving playground."
It's-- debatable whether Shalune can actually see Malevolence. The pink-haired girl definitely isn't acting any different to those afflicted by it, and even waves at one of them. On the other hand, she's certainly carrying a Medium, part of the stone plate visible where it sticks out of one of the many pockets of her coat.
"Ah, sorry-- my name's Shalune. Shalune Amira? If you've heard of the Cara--" she clamps her mouth shut for a moment, then slides her eyes to one side in a terrifically obvious maneuver. "I mean, um. I used to be with a group of friends, but they're kind of busy elsewhere right now. I struck off on my own for a bit. ... honestly, still kinda wondering what's the plan."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Honestly, the only thing he's ingested that he's severely regretted has been alcoholic. Even if it's 'basic' by certain standards, well.
Solarian food's grown in vats, or that's what they tell the people. Most of it's prepackaged, and generally speaking, there's not much in the way of cooking at all. Artificial flavoring and ingredients? Most assuredly. It tastes fine to him.
And so does this, which he, as she explains a thing or two about Big Shal, tucks away with astonishing speed. He probably could go for another bowl or two, honestly, but...
Sometimes you have your limits handed to you. Even he's pretty sure he couldn't weasel another bowl.
"Sounds handy," he says, scraping the last bits of it up with the makeshift utensil he'd received. Something to consider if they finished the Gear repairs underway: just say they're like that weird animate statue. That would help things remain unsuspected until...
Until whatever Command's next plan was was underway.
"I can't say I've seen something like her before, though. Where'd you find her?"
Blue eyes skim sidelong at the children playing around on Big Shal as if she were the best playground equipment in the world.
Huh, it sort of takes him back...
His gaze returns to her, sizing her up again for a heartbeat or two. That weapon she'd used had shortcircuited Schiehallion. Was it a lucky shot, or something people like her shouldn't have? That, he can't answer.
The Medium he notes in passing. He also takes short note of the pot--
"Shalune, huh?"
Probably, that was 'Caravan Kinship'. He knows they're also on Lunar, and he furthermore knows that they've caused a headache or two in the past. Though, lately...
"And they left you behind like that?"
It's the sort of social wound (or so he thinks) that he knows well. "Hmph, well that was certainly kind of them," he comments, his words dripping with sarcasm. Dropping the bowl on a nearby surface, he then takes a look at the pot as if noticing it for the first time. He squats down alongside it and pushes his glasses up his nose a touch. "What's this?"
<Pose Tracker> Shalune Amira has posed.
"Built her," Shalune responds just like that. The answer is much too flippant, and the reason why becomes obvious soon enough - her smile tugs wider as she expects a reaction, her eyebrows going up as the grin lights up her face. After letting that answer hang for a bit, she rubs at her hair all over again. "Aw, I mean-- I found bits of her in an old junkyard, and decided I really liked her, so I hung around to try to figure out how she worked. It took pretty much a whole year of tinkering, but I got there in the end."
"I've always been pretty good with that sort of thing, y'know?" she adds as she straightens up as much as she can, and points a thumb in the direction of her poorly crossed-out sign. "Give me a gunsmoke ARM or a bit of machinery and I can usually figure out how it works pretty quickly. Might involve taking it apart a bit, but I can usually put stuff together good as new." A pause, and she adds: "... I do more complex ARMs too. Filgaian ones," she claims suddenly, and grins sheepishly as she taps at her ear. "Um, I mean, I'm just saying, I don't think anyone on Lunar could make frames that delicate."
The man's rather blunt question brings her up short from whatever she was about to add, not to mention the question of his name in turn. Instead, Shalune blinks in quiet surprise, and it takes her a moment to recover and lapse into a lopsided smile. "Oh-- no, um, it's actually kind of the opposite. Things were getting pretty tense and shouty, so I just kind of wanted to get out of there for a bit, y'know? Get a bit of space, get a bit of peace and quiet. I do that every so often," she adds, then... pauses to look at their environs once more.
"... um, even if I admit this isn't exactly holiday material. But it's something to take my mind off things, y'know? It feels nice to help out."
"Oh-- hehe, that's my other secret weapon!" she claims as she pumps a fist; the light on the device has stopped, and a small mechanical part gently sits in the middle, which Shalune carefully picks up to hold against the light to inspect it. "If I dump a bunch of scrap in there then think real hard about what I want to make exactly, it'll do the work for me." ... so she says, just like that, already reaching for a small bag of nails in another pocket.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
That earns her a surprised blink. "You built her," he echoes, glancing up at the Golem, down at Shalune, then back up again. "Even if you found the pieces, that's just..." he trails out, comes to an abrupt hault, and it takes everything he has not to come skidding right back at her with his next question:
"A junkyard? For g... statue parts?"
He nearly did say 'Golem'.
Even in a year, that boggles the mind. Particularly since she wouldn't have anything approaching a proper workshop, supplies, tools...
Even in Solaris with all of that in place, building a new Gear from the ground up takes a few weeks for standard models, and months for something more customized. Comparatively, it should take someone without any of that...
He's no engineer, but he figures a good while longer.
Then again, if she's like some of those ARMs Meisters he's run into on the surface, it might go some way to explaining it, if not account for entirely. He's still wrapping his head around that one. Then she makes a particular comment.
Frames that delicate--
His hand rises up to the glasses he's wearing, fidgeting with the temples. Shit, runs the thought absently. I didn't even think about that.
His reaction -- and expression -- more or less suggests: 'you caught me'.
It wasn't that they left her, she clarifies. She left them. Because things were noisy and troublesome.
He folds his arms, as if in thought for a moment.
Actually, in a rare bit of empathy, he can kind of get that.
Still, what he says is: "And none of them have checked in on you? Hmm."
He knows how that one goes, too.
The 'pot' meanwhile doesn't entirely look like anything he's familiar with.
But as they say, he's (at least a lot close to) a doctor, not an engineer.
"...A reactor?" he utters, without thinking about what he's saying, at least not immediately, once she explains what it is and (more or less) what it does.
Engineering might know about something like this. There's machines they can use to 'print' parts, but beyond that...
It's out of his domain knowledge.
"And it... makes them perfectly for you?"
<Pose Tracker> Shalune Amira has posed.
Loren's surprise pulls a grin out of the pink-haired girl, and she bobs from left to right, happy at her guess. "Aw, don't worry. I'm not gonna tell anyone. Filgaians-- well, I won't say we've got to 'stick together' or anything given how different we all are, but there's no sense making trouble for each other 'til we've got a way home, right? We're stuck up here, so it's better to make the best of it."
At this point, Shalune does actually have a reasonable inkling of what a 'Veruni' is, which fills in a lot of the details she was never quite sure about - why a junkyard existed on Elru, why it had so much advanced machinery, what it was for and why it was so much better than anything she'd seen before. It throws up other questions, of course - why an old Veruni woman decided to teach a wayward human girl and offer her so much trust - but those Shalune's content to leave until she's back home.
She snickers instead, rubbing at her hair. "Ah-- yeah. Well. I mean, you know how you can get some really weird stuff in Filgaian ruins, right? I always figured it was something like that, and someone dumped her, then I was just able to fill in the pieces. I mean, I made the left leg basically by copying the right wholesale, so it's not like I did all the design work myself. The arms are Shalune originals, but I still got to crib a bunch of stuff."
"... I guess they haven't," she admits of the Carakin after a moment, scratching at her cheek. "But I'm pretty good at diving off on my own at this point. Got a tent, got some money, got some stuff to sell. It's not hard to strike out on my own for a few days. I mean-- when I was younger, I vanished off to Elru for a year," she adds, terribly sheepish all of a sudden as she recognizes the fact: "Now that was real dumb."
"Ah--" she peeks over the rim of the pot as it rattles; it's hard to see past the shine of light, but the shape of the nails turns indistinct then starts to meld together. Her look is the look of someone who knows the rules, but can't really explain them in words. "... I've got to really know the shape of what I'm making, and the materials. Exact components, too - I can't just ask for a whole ARM unless you want an ARM-shaped block of metal. I tried mixing some potions in it once, but it just kinda made sludge. Took ages to clean it off," she natters proudly.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He sighs, a little overtly world-weary here. "Well, that's certainly good news," he says, a touch too dryly. "Hmph..."
Was that what van Houten had been trying to tell him?
That or she had been simply continuing to imply what he knows she really felt about him. He shifts at that thought, as if uncomfortable.
"Maybe so," he allows, at a distance.
For Loren, though, Elru really only means one thing. Certainly, there are multiple nations there. Certainly, even the Veruni are rumored to be living on that continent. But it's a particular combat operation that arrives first on the scene in his mind.
And thus:
"To... Elru?" If he looks aghast, well, he maybe is. He was still in school while the conflict on that continent was underway, but it doesn't mean he knows nothing of it. "You went to Elru." And he might be trying to do a little mental arithmetic to try and work out how old she is and whether or not she'd worked her way on over there while...
And ultimately gives up on that front. Probably after, he decides.
He'll leave it for Command to work out whether they should worry on it or not.
"I... see. Well, you certainly got lucky." More than a little, if he's any judge, but then he's not entirely aware of what... could be lying around certain spots of Elru.
Perhaps even Solarian wreckage, given the circumstances of the battle.
The Demon of Elru...
He shakes his head at the thought. "So you used this device to... fill in the gaps, and you were able to get her working from there." It's starting to sound a lot more reasonable at this juncture, but still, this is a bit beyond what a surfacer should normally be capable of accomplishing.
Another element for a report, he thinks. Even if it might not matter to command as long as we're here.
Which means it might not ever matter, at this rate.
But at least it's something. He stands then, leaving his closer inspection of the pot behind, then turns towards her and folds his arms across his chest. So she has been left to her own devices.
"But if you do know what you're making, you can make just about anything. That sounds like it could be useful." He glances back down at the pot. Perhaps if engineering had something like that on hand... well, technically, they do have the reactors to make their own sections of parts according to schematics. But he doesn't know enough to say which of the two is better or worse. Probably that, if he's any judge, is ancient technology... maybe what the reactors are based on.
Under just about any other circumstance, the labs would do just about anything to get their hands on all of this.
"I'm afraid to know why," he says, starting out slowly, "but what was so dumb about going to Elru?"