2018-11-19: What Changes, And How Does It Change You
- Log: What Changes, And How Does It Change You?
- Cast: Loren Voss, Leah Sadalbari
- Where: Baskar Colony
- Date: November 19th 2018
- Summary: Immediately after Into The Place Of Fear, chance sees Loren and Leah down into the dark, leaving Lan alone. An important question is almost asked.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He's read about rock formations like this before. Usually the result of wind when out in the desert -- likely by water, as far underground as they are now. They invariably get names like 'the thread' or 'the needle' due to their narrowness.
Eventually, they succumb to the stresses of the environment and crumble.
There is no light to be had. Just the endless pulse of violet. Green.
And the force that results from the two meeting.
An impossible, rotten wind howls. It's far too late for the three of them to turn back. Nothing to be done now except soldier on.
The next pulse reaches them, following the lights in the dark.
Loren stumbles under the impact. Staggering backwards, he plants one booted foot firmly in an attempt to right himself.
The section of the fragile stone bridge crumbles.
With a shout, Loren tumbles sidelong over the edge. His attempt to grab for the bridge fails, his finger catching nothing but air.
All he can see is the two of them in silhouette as the cavern is once again illuminated green, then violet, rapidly slipping out of sight.
I thought... I had a little longer...
He continues to fall, down into the abyss.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
What happens above, when Loren falls? With Leah and Lan? ...That, Loren won't be able to see as he falls out of sight. But there is a sense of something at the edge of his perception, a sudden rush of Ether above. ...But in the darkness, the next thing he sees--
The next thing he sees is Leah, driving straight down, wrapped in brilliant green winds that rocket her downward, downward even faster than gravity would allow. There is a force above, meeting; amidst the rocks, there is something that must be happening above. But instead...
A single blue eye shines brightly enough in her own light to be visible, blue hair whipped upward. Her form is shifted, one hand forward, spear at her side, to be as aerodynamic as possible. And quickly, she catches up.
That arm reaches out, visibly inhuman, chrome and black. Loren will feel being grabbed in turn, Leah abrubtly turning mid-air such that her feet are towards the ground, her prosthetic angled to impact heel-first.
She doesn't say anything, but this close Loren can feel the iron grip she holds on the very air around them, the weave of Ether that must be maintaining her focus.
...The ground approaches quickly, and when they hit, Loren won't be harmed--but the rocks will shower outward with the force of landing, forming a crater.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
His fall sees fit to even snatch his glasses from his face, visible as a faint glimmer as the violet glows.
Before he's swallowed by the darkness below.
He doesn't see anything. He can't see anything. Is it a blessing or a curse? The darkness below swallows up even the lights that flicker erratically across the cavern wall. Even they're growing dim--
What is WRONG with you? Are you just going to give up and DIE here?!
His thoughts jolt him to action like nothing else. He takes a breath, as much as he can while falling. He draws in Ether--
It might not be enough. It probably won't be enough. But still, he... can't just--
He feels Ether, not his own.
Leah--?
He realizes it before he sees her, swooping in from above like an avenging angel.
Which is, technically speaking, pretty close to her job description.
She catches him, roughly. Falling at speed, such a maneuver would have cost someone still flesh and blood.
But Leah is far less that than she used to be.
He grabs onto her. He breathes, lending his own Ether to hers. Earth might be useless in the air, with nothing to anchor it to -- at least like this.
But he can help to reinforce her body.
Particularly
when they both
come crashing down.
It's dark down here. Even the lights are dull and distant. It takes Loren some fumbling to locate his penlight, and click it on.
...He sort of wishes he hadn't. Skulls litter the pit in which they've both landed, grinning at him in apparent mockery.
He looks away.
...Tries to disentangle himself from her grasp.
"Leah, I, uh..."
What's he supposed to say? Thank you for saving me? Sorry for causing the mission to fail?
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
Flesh and blood can only go so far. ...Leah, apparently, goes farther; she is less fragile than she once was. This is all the clearer as the darkness looms ahead, as they've hit the ground, impacted--
Unbending one robotic knee, setting down her other foot, Leah turns towards Loren as he moves away; she allows it, after an instant, a slight delay before her metal hand obeys her. She rolls her shoulders then, looking up up into the gloom.
The skulls don't sem to bother her much.
"...It's fine," Leah says, turning back to him. You're not sure what to say; that's not a problem."
Leah readjusts her grip on her spear, and glances herself over; the rock beneath her, of course, has been entirely pulverized, and her boot is shredded by the impact... but the limb itself is entirely intact, undamaged.
"...She'll probably be fine up there," she allows. "But we'll need to find an exit. My gravitational module still needs to recharge, so going back up is... less than practical."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
The impact had been massive. Involuntary, a shudder threads its way up his spine. Even with Ether, he's not certain what shape he would have been in if he had hit the bottom himself.
Flesh is weak. It's the secret every medical student -- destined for the military or otherwise -- learns. Flesh gives. Decays. Grows old.
Leah, with her limbs of steel, has become greater.
All she had to do to gain it was lose.
Why... do people on the surface bury their dead like this?
He closes his eyes.
No need for an answer?
"Ah," he utters, simply, feeling useless. More than useless.
Of course Lan will be fine. It's her people's place.
Leah had jumped after him without hesitation...
"No, of course not. We... well, you, er, are you..." A foolish question: she's as right as she ever will be. He lapses into silence a moment. "I..."
Even that fails. He slides again into silence, taking a few steps near to the edge of the crater, then crests it to rejoin the cavern floor. His light catches a skull again and he once more looks away from it.
Idiot! It's just a skull. Haven't you seen enough of them in your textbooks?
He ends up taking breath after breath, once again attempting to force a sort of center upon himself. It's nothing, it's nothing, it's nothing it'snothing it'snothingit'snothing--
He fumbles in his bag for a certain container, pulls out a single tablet and slips it under his tongue. It's bitter; he grimaces.
Still, it might... be faster, this way.
Eyes still closed, he takes another breath. Slower now.
Reaches a hand up to readjust--
"...I lost them," he utters suddenly, turning back to look at Leah, in dismay. "My glasses. I... I don't know where..."
If he doesn't get them back, there'll be hell to pay, at least from the higher-ups. They can't risk leaving equipment like that for a Lamb to possibly find.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
It might make someone wonder--how do people she works with usually end up coming to see her? Pleasant demeanor, and then... This. Living through what should rightly kill anyone; walking away when most wouldn't be able to stand. Flesh decays... But what is left, when it's replaced? What is there?
"I'm fine," Leah answers Loren, when he trails off and loses his focus. "Quick diagnostics indicate no lasting damage." That may be why she was quiet at first. "...Falls aren't much of a problem for me, as a rule. I studied a way of combat that relies on them. Even without the shock absorbers in the leg, it's not an issue."
Studied outside Jugend, presumably. It's certainly not a normal style.
She doesn't really move, otherwise. Doesn't shift to a more comfortable position, doesn't get towards a wall. She just stands there, waits. He takes the tablet, and she waits. And then--
"..." Here, she turns towards him. "...Dutiful soldier. More concerned with the equipment they'll trouble you for than your own life. ...That's what they teach at Jugend these days, isn't it?"
It might be strange, but she doesn't actually sound like she approves. A moment after saying it though, she starts to walk a few steps forward, looking down. "All right, fine. We'll look for it." She pauses. "You didn't see this. For the record. ...Not even if the Commander asks."
At that, Leah reaches up towards her face, and Loren can see the cord of her eyepatch shifting, even standing behind her--she takes it off. ...When she turns, there is no wound. There is no empty socket, no glass orb; there's something else, something strange and mechanical. It is... an eye, certainly. But it does not pretend to be flesh.
Something clicks, as Leah stares into space, and then begins looking around. "...I can find them," she says simply. "Here..."
She begins to turn, looking circular around the room. It's not visible light that she's looking through, however. The item--or its pieces--shouldn't be a problem to find when searching for its signatures on other spectrums. Radio, electrical activity, Ether. One will have it.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
No lasting damage. He'd thought as much -- not that he can be sure of all the cables and connections and minute pieces in her legs, but the fact alone that she's walking is certainity enough... as is the knowledge that her limbs are built to take abuse. Are build, in fact, to last her weeks, months, perhaps even years without repairs if necessary.
Such is the life of a field operative like her.
There's a glance her way when she mentions a certain combat style -- what style, apparently, he can only guess at, but certainly not something from Jugend.
Then again, neither is the form he's been learning.
He hasn't put it to use at all lately -- he must be getting rusty.
An odd though to have, in a dark abyss littered with skulls, deep in the depths of a catacomb complex.
He feels again, upon mentioning his lost equipment, small. Like he's approximately twelve, again, instead of a man of twenty. "Leah, I... if you need to go on ahead, I'll, uh..."
But he's right. He will catch hell. They'd make him come back for it anyway.
Even down here. Even if equipment was lost in the sea they'd look for it, or so he's heard.
It can't be risked.
He blinks. "See what?" A heartbeat transpires. Frustration boils over where anxiety had once held court: she brings up the Commander again. "O-of course not! Can't you... can't you cut me some slack?"
All I ever did was look, anyway--
But she shows him what she means by 'see'.
She can see much with an eye like that, in fact...
Here in the still quiet, he draws a breath. Legs, arm... eye.
"...Right. Right, following after you, Le-- Major."
It's not hard to find it. They're lenses wired with Ether-conducting cables and glass. Not for vision, but for enhanced control.
They're in a sorry state when she finds them, but find them she does, glimmering in the darkness.
Her darkness.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
So it is.
But Leah doesn't go on ahead of Loren. However young he feels, she doesn't acknowledge it for now. ...She doesn't even laugh as her old teasing finds a mark without even having to try. There may be another reason she mentioned the Commander that comes to mind, now that she's revealed what she means... Or maybe not. It's entirely in her habits to talk about such things even at a moment like this.
The strange mechanical whirring of her 'eye'--perhaps more like a camera's aperture than something natural--is audible, faintly, over heartbeats and heartbeats. Sensors bring in, interpret data, convert it into something that can interface with her mind. ...And again the single good leg has a different gait than the mechanical one as she begins to walk, step away, move towards...
"Here," she says. The darkness--her darkness. There is no sense that she has to move slowly, that she is at all troubled by the lack of light. Indeed, as she bends, she picks up the damaged piece of equipment and rises with it, turning Loren's way. "...Should be reparable," she comments, looking them over more with the mechanical eye than the organic. "But they'd be dangerous to use until you do. The way they are now..." She shakes her head. "Technical details." Walking back, she extends them to Loren, and begins to replace her eyepatch.
"You should be able to feel a break in the stone with your Earth ether. Look for it; that's our way out."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He swallows down the remnants of the pill, trying not to gag at its bitter taste. They're supposed to be swallowed, not taken sublingually, but desperate times desperate measures. He needed to get his head right as quickly as possible.
...Maybe it wasn't about 'that' he realizes, a touch belatedly.
And more about what she's become. There are things even Commander Ramses isn't aware of, it seems.
He trails after her, light catching on stone -- and bone -- in the dark. There must be things she can sense that he can't.
He could spend days, weeks, down here with a high-powered light and still not find what he's looking for.
She finds it in minutes. It's not just a matter of the visible spectra -- an eye like that must see more than its organic counterpart.
He's heard about strange sea creatures that could see the invisible spectra of the distant stars. Insects, it's said, see the world quite differently from mammals -- for bees, flowers are said to be lined with markers that tell them there's food to be had.
What does the world look like to Leah with that eye?
She finds it and she hands it over. Gingerly, he takes the pair, wraps them up as best he can and sticks them into his bag.
And finally, he finds some of the words: "...Thanks."
He'll hand them over to equipment services once they're back. They won't be happy about it, but it's not his problem now, is it?
"So now--"
'So now what', is what he had been about to say.
She answers that before he can get all the words out.
"Oh."
Closing his eyes, he takes a breath. Exhales Ether.
"...Right. I can feel it," and he approaches the wall, places a hand upon it. "Right here. It's fragile." He opens his eyes, glances back over at her. "A little stress or a sudden application of shock should be enough. ...Was this a buried path or something?"
Perhaps there was a way down here, once.
And another breath follows.
It's simply a matter of taking the pressures in one section of the rock and willing them to weight in a different direction than before and--
And the rock can't take it like that.
Loren takes a step back, away from the wall as it crumbles away, shattering.
"Someone sealed this, and did a bad job of it," he comments, crouching briefly to inspect one of the fallen pieces of stone.
He looks up at her. "...Did you see that? The break."
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
Leah is a woman with many secrets, not all of which she shares with the regular chain of command. It's possible to forget that she is no longer part of Gebler, given how she interacts with the others... but she isn't.
Whatever the world looks like to Leah there, she does not share that either--but it must be different from what she saw before It must be strange, feel different. ...She mentioned already that her limbs do not feel cold, do not feel much of anything at all. After replacement after replacement...
What changes?
'Now what' he doesn't finish. Leah waits, though--she nods, and focuses with her other senses, feeling out the shift of Earth Ether. It is not, precisely, a standard usage. ...But she had a feeling.
"It might've been," she answers. "Whatever happened here, I get the picture that it happened fairly quickly... and without a lot of time to handle the details." Leah looks to the wall, and waits. As the blocked path crumbles, revealing a way out, Leah watches. She inclines her head. "Yes," to both at first. "...Good work."
She pauses, looks around one more time, and then steps towards their new exit. "Be ready. There may be more reason that they sealed off the path. You handle the rear, and I'll take point. We'll meet back up with her outside."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
What changes, and how does it change you?
Sometimes he feels like nothing's changed -- he's still the tagalong kid brother. He's always looking up at others, waiting for the day when he'll finally be able to join them.
Maybe it's like how it is for a caterpillar -- waiting for moment of transformation.
And other days, he feels like everything's changed. He's not who he used to be, he can't turn back to how things used to be. They're gone, it all slid out of grasp a long time ago. Even what he's striving for now... it feels like a distant dream of the him of a couple years past.
Nothing good awaits. Even if he were to go back home, the result would be the same.
He's no moth, or even a butterfly, for all the changes he's undergone.
What happens to a caterpillar that can't emerge...?
"Right," he says, standing. He lets her pass him before he draws his blade and, with a wary look behind him, follows.
"...Hey," he says, after a few moments. "Leah. Do you ever..."
Miss home?
Miss what you used to have?
Miss... 'him'?
Loren's silence drags on far too long. The small beam of light traces the walls of the pathway. Old carvings. Feathers, serpents. Here and there, stylized skulls.
He shakes his head finally, and breaks his self-imposed muteness: "Nevermind. We should hurry. There might be more of those tomb guardians. We'll want to report in, too."
In this moment at last, he sounds more like himself.