[img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/586635337355231274/728842332643786762/Cyrus-Header.png[/img]
[color=9e0b0f][u][i]Collab with Shiva[/i][/u][/color]

Even working diligently, it was taking Maria the better part of an hour to get the cargo bay completely cleaned up. She'd settled on at least shoving stuff out of the way so that Persephone could land, and then she'd sort through and figure out what went in which crate later. The crates she'd lined up were quickly becoming filled with odds and ends, random bits of cargo that she'd sort eventually. Closer to the airlock was where Teg had been shot. Maria had been putting off clearing that area, not particularly keen on seeing the blood of her crew staining the ship, but alas if Persephone was going to get in that needed to be cleared as well. Maria made her way over, spotting what looked like an arm in the rubble. Must be a shipment of cybernetic parts. The Glao were pretty big into body mods, so she wasn't really surprised. It looked to be in somewhat decent condition, at the very least. Maria bent down and picked it up- but it didn't budge from it's spot. 
With a thoughtful scowl knitting her eyebrows, Maria pulled a little harder, and when that didn't work she shifted away some of the trash and debris, and discovered that the arm was in fact connected to something. A body. The body of what appeared to be a highly advanced robot - an android, an earth antique of some historical value.

This would have been one of the items the [i]Veritas[/i] was smuggling off for a deal - though the contents of the now smashed crate the android had been shipped in had certainly been unknown to the crew before now.
The android itself was in surprisingly good condition - probably either meaning it was a later model or hadn't gotten to see much action before it'd been decommissioned, or killed.
It had a coat of matte black paint, save for a few scratches and a double stripe of purple down the middle of its head.
The android was essentially a solid chunk of heavy alloys and complex machinery, and would definitely be impossible for Maria to move by herself at this point.

"For the love of all that's good n' pure in this forsaken 'verse..." Maria muttered to herself as she came to this conclusion, continuing to clear as much of the debris as she could while working around the android. Why couldn't even the cleaning up go smooth? Now she'd have to get some of the crew to help her with this, and the gods knew they had enough work to do already. Two crew members down, a newbie coming on board, recovering from a battle, and trying to get cargo delivered. It had been one hell of a day.

As Maria was doing this, a zap of electricity from a loose wire nearby jumped across, striking the android in the eye - causing his whole body to flicker briefly with violet light.

After a moment or two, the bright purple glow returned, though slowly, seeming to illuminate the android from within, seeping between metal plates and wiring.
One of his eyes - the one that hadn't just been fried - blinked on with a vibrant blue.

All of a sudden moment, the android sat up with a shake of his head. With his right arm, he tapped the side of his head, and the dead eye blinked to life.
"Ugh, I feel like a bear just woke up from hibernation..."
His voice sounded peculiarly natural, for a complex piece of machinery.
Looking around at the cargo bay, he spotted Maria.
"Well hi!"

The captain stayed silent for a solid twenty seconds while staring at the hunk of metal that was, evidently, alive. She didn't even look surprised, just irritated and exhausted, and completely done with whatever crazy curse had apparently befallen her boat.
"What the hell are you? And [i]why[/i] the hell are you alive?"

Several of the android's face plates adjusted to form a face of confusion as Maria asked both those questions.
"Well why wouldn't I be alive? You telling me you've never seen someone like me before? Cyrus Three. Uh..."
He paused to take another look around.
"Where am I anyway?"

"You're on my ship. You were a piece of cargo, but for some reason you're awake now. I reckon that flicker of electricity had something to do with it."
Maria also wondered if perhaps the energy blast that took out Teg might have had something to do with it, but it didn't really matter anyway.
"And no, I haven't seen someone like you before. Well I mean I've seen something like you in a museum, and the Ithlo have androids to assist them in all of their fancy medical nonsense, but nothing quite as... Animated, as you."
Cyrus looked shocked.
"Piece of [i]cargo[/i]? [i]Museum[/i]?"
"... How long was I out?"
"..." Maria regarded the android for a moment, heaving a sigh before deciding to put some effort into being understanding and her version of kind with him.
"What's the last date that you remember?"
"Well it was the year... 352. I think. My memory's a bit fuzzy."
He frowned.
"That's not really supposed to happen."

Finally the captain did look somewhat surprised. She'd expected a few decades perhaps, thinking that maybe he'd been booted up a couple of times for general software maintenance, but it had been hundreds of years since this android had last been conscious. Far, far before humanity was in this universe. It was no wonder that his memory was a bit fuzzy, his circuits were probably rusted beyond belief. 
"The year is 526 AE, and you've been asleep for somewhere around 170 years."

The android looked like he wanted to say something, but then decided against it.
He stood up with a grunt, brushing off his clothes, again with his right hand.
"Well, uh... Since it looks like I'm not really going anywhere for now, d'you need help cleaning up around here? Looks to me like there was a right scuffle. I'll do what I can anyway! Seems my memory isn't the only malfunction I'm experiencing."
He grabbed his left arm with his right hand and shook it in a sort of limp wave. Dropping it with a visible shudder of several plates, he added, "seems my arm's dead. But uh, I can still carry some stuff."

She thought about arguing with him for a moment. After all, she had no idea what this android was, what his programming was, where he came from exactly, but then another voice in her head piped up and said he couldn't possibly be much of a threat. He'd been a piece of cargo for crying out loud, and wasn't exactly in shape to take out the entire ship. She was also beyond exhausted, and the offer of help was too much for her to pass up.
"Sure. Help me get this area around the airlock cleaned up. We have a friend who needs to dock their ship."
"Oh, friends are nice! ... Right?"
Putting his good arm over the top of a fallen crate, he lifted it without too much difficulty and stacked up and out of the way.
"... Sure."

The cleaning process went by much more quickly with Cyrus Three helping out, and before too much time had passed they had cleaned up the cargo bay to the point that Persephone could safely dock without breaking anything, and Maria gave her the okay. After a few minutes, Persephone had maneuvered her tiny fighter in through the airlock, the airlock pressurized again, and she was officially on the Veritas Lux Mea.
A piece of paneling on her ship popped out, evidently being the "door," and a head of pink hair quickly appeared as she shimmied herself out of her ship- though Maria was beginning to get the impression that the hunk of metal barely fit that classification.
"Do you not have a hatch?" She asked as the woman —evidently a pink Ithlo cyborg— stood up.
"Oh, I did, but I got into this bad fight a few weeks back and it kinda fused shut. I've been screwing and unscrewing that panel just until I could get to the point of fixing it. Most of my tools are shot, so..." The cyborg shrugged a little. "Hi by the way! Wow I love your hair. Also who is this guy?? Are you an android???? Oh my gosh that's so cool!" 
"..."
"What?"
"Nothing."

"Yes I am! Though I'm starting to question the plausibility of my being alive..."
He made a sound of clearing his throat.
"You mentioned repairing your ship? Sorry this is sudden, but you don't think you might be able to have a look at my arm, do you? It's not listening to me."
Persephone looked like a giddy child at his request. 
"I'd love to!" She went over and started inspecting where his arm should be, looking at the wiring and the way things worked together.

"Woah this is some super weird human stuff. Do you know if your parts were made to function more like cybernetics or traditional mechanics? It's not a huge difference, but it changes the types of tools I'll need to use."
"I have no idea. Isn't that the doc's job to know which parts go where? I mean I ain't a walking encyclopedia, I just shoot heads, yanno?"
Looking at the severed part of his arm with a genuinely disturbed expression, he added, "if I had to guess though, looks like a bit of both. The plates seem to be more cybernetic and the... Well, the "bones" and the rest of it... Seem mechanized to respond to computer data - that'd be my head."
He handed it back to her and looked away.
"Ugh, please don't make me look at that again, I feel queasy... I think I'm going to faint..."

"That's interesting..." Persephone commented, mostly focused on his arm and the parts. "You feel queasy? You're sentient? Sorry if that's an insensitive question, I've just frankly never seen anything like you before. Also humans aren't a very technologically advanced species, so it's surprising that they've managed to make sentient artificial intelligence when the pinnacle of technology in the galaxy hasn't. No offense, captain."
"None taken," Maria replied. It was true humans were on the bottom of the pile as far as technology was concerned, but from what little history Maria knew, that hadn't always been the case. Before they had stripped the universe of everything it produced, humanity had been a highly advanced society. But evidently not advanced enough, as evidenced by where they currently found themselves.
"If you need some tools, go down that catwalk to the right and look for an angry Scotsman in the engine room. He'll probably have a few things you can barrow. Name's Ansgar."
"Thanks captain! Will do, once I get things straight around here."

"Yeah, well, I think I'm sentient. What's the definition of sentience again? Free will? Reasoning? Emotion? As far as I'm aware of, you humans scrapped together our bodies and we just kinda... Woke up, and that was that. Far as I know, no one ever dug into my brain and rewired it. They just wound us up and let us run. I mean, sure, the Cyrus series were built for more tactical purposes in mind, but, I still made my own choices. They put me through the military academy, and in-between I went to school like everyone else. We ain't born knowing everything. Didn't take me long to figure out how to talk, though! Graduated college with a major in... I forget. Probably something to do with the Navy. I hope I'm not dying... What if I've got brain cancer?? Doc, you wouldn't know how to test me for that, would you?"

"Now don't panic," Persephone said, finally standing up straight. "Your circuits are probably all messed up from being asleep for so long. I mean all things considered, you're in fantastic condition, so you should be happy and proud! I'm gonna grab those tools, and then I'll come back and start looking you over, okay?"

"Okay, doc, I'll try to stay calm... I've just never been... Well... dead before... I don't know what's wrong with me."
He held his stomach with a grimace.
"Oh, that doesn't feel good..."

She nodded, smiling sympathetically at the poor android. "Don't worry, you're alright. Just sit down for a few minutes and I'll be back as soon as I can."
With that she dashed off, going in the direction that the captain had pointed her in. Meanwhile Maria went over to the ships comms and made a shipwide announcement.
" Attention all hands: We have two new members on board, so don't get spooked if you see a pink chick and an android running around. Get yourselves as stabilized as you can, and then come to the cargo bay so we can get a plan of action discussed and get on our way again."