[b]Solarel [/b] The spirit has shaped a repair drone from a nanobot swarm. It appears as a solid drone, spherical, about half a meter in radius, but when it approaches a camera, it ripples and buzzes in flux. It shapes itself an arm from the nanobots to begin taking the camera apart. Perhaps the spirit thinks itself cunning, drawing from the resources of the station/facility/planet in this way, or perhaps it’s simply steeped in the use of nanobots to such an extent that it would entirely rely on them rather than have fully fabricated drones for this sort of function. Regardless, the nanobots are efficient. They can extend a scanning appendage, subsume the camera, fabricate any necessary wiring, and then replace the fixed camera. The entire process takes only a few moments. There may even be several such swarm drones operating at the same time, limiting your ability to safely double back along the cave routes. You can interrupt the drone at any time. It’s animated by a single simple geist of the same nature as Annika’s and obviously of this locale. It’s focused on a single function doing repairs and that function does not include area scanning for you. This also feels like the tip of an iceberg. You’ve mostly run out of space in this facility. It goes several levels, but once you get deep enough you’re in natural earth and that eventually hits solid rock unconnected to any other cave systems. It seems like you’ve got three or so cave levels (some dip up and down but about three) and then at least two research levels and since you haven’t gone up perhaps it extends upwards a bit more. But all told this area you’re in is something like a large park in overall size and that’s it. The implication of flying a shuttle into the planet for this suggests so much more, but it’s not all right here. Of course, thinking through what Annika wanted is a question for later, when you have finished being hunted/hunter. Right now, the question is what your play is with the drone? *** [b]Isabelle [/b] “Heee, heeee!” Annika laughs. Despite being a Zaldarian who seems really into the black capes and mysterious cult aesthetic, she laughs with a high, girlish joy to her. “It worked, Crescent, do you realize what this means? It can work without Zaldarian geists, the biologic systems of the Terenians and perhaps even the Hybrasilians with the right catalyst can function with the [i]Trak’tho[/i] technology! She giggles with an infectious joy as she gathers herself to enter the facility door, before gathering herself. She and Crescent begin to stride off, but seeing you standing there somewhat stunned, she stops again, obviously mulling back over what you said, trying to think of the problem before she thinks she’s got it. “You are not in need of medical attention, the facility is adequately sterile and the cut will not be infected. Now come, we need to try and catch up with the facility guardian. Perhaps we can placate it before Solarel does anything else to anger it! Or at least collect data from her untimely destruction.” She beckons you onwards, Isabelle. Meanwhile, the nanobots sing in your blood. You can feel them like a…well it doesn’t hurt exactly. Do you know the feeling when you drink something cold and you can feel it move through your body from within? It’s kind of like that but moving up. It is surely too late to amputate the arm, this is going straight to the brain. But it’s useful. The immediate thing that you’re getting is a station blueprint. Perhaps that’s what the designers thought would be most useful for someone who was accessing its systems for the first time, and everybody loves a map on their HUD, right? Though this isn’t a HUD per se, it’s more like you just have a good mental picture of the place as though you’d walked through it twenty times, except that you shouldn’t have that information. There’s more you can get here, there is so much more. Too much actually, it’s an information overload problem and whoever designed these nanobots was aware of that so it’s not going to start dropping tons of information on you. You’ll need to ask for what you want and provide them with some kind of direction. Meanwhile, what you’ve got is that this particular facility has six levels. The top level is personnel quarters, the level below that is laboratory facilities, the level you’re on now is entry and testing, and the three levels below are natural caverns used for storage and relevant experimentation. Oh and Annika and Crescent are getting away, and they might be your only ride out of here. *** [b]Dolly and Jade[/b] “Jade!” Ksharta shouts before realizing it. Not Dolly, no. You can tell she liked it, the first kiss was a bit of a surprise, but she was hot for the second one, hot for the apology kiss, hot even for the public embarrassment of it because no, you haven’t wildly misread Ksharta Talonna and sometimes kisses are just very good no matter what the context. But, she was trying to [i]do something[/i] right now, and the chefs are snickering and everybody is staring, and Angela is laughing to herself through her gag, which is going to make quietly having a nice cooking session with these folks a lot harder. And Ksharta Talonna, in even this short time, knows whose feet to lay that at and it’s not Dolly. So, despite her piety and her service, in the moment, when the kiss is done, she shouts “Jade! I am trying to do some cooking! Goodness!” And then she humphs, turns around, and walks over to the chefs, doing her absolute best to make sure that she doesn’t overheat completely from shame, even as her brain catches up to the fact that she just mouthed off to a goddess oh god oh no she’s committed blasphemy oh Ksharta what you done it was nice why did you get mad at a goddess aaaaaah! But she can’t turn around now, Dolly would see her blush, and the chefs would laugh at her, and she does want to fix the food, which is good but not quite right. “You need more spice” she says loudly, as she walks up to the chefs, ignoring their snickering and their looks. “And more herbs, this is too plain and you’re over-relying on the way Hybrasilians are conditioned to eat meat! Put in some pepper, and something more earthy, like this.” She starts walking past chefs and picking up ingredients from their station, adding them to the big soup cauldron. She’s on a warpath now because if she does anything else, she will collapse utterly into self-deprecation. *** [b]Mirror[/b] You’re given a bubble of space with Marcina as you draw the glyphs and speak. Others are drinking nearby, engineers, training pilots, reporters, everyone who forms the sort of host around a champion. But she has given you her full attention and part of their social agreement to be allowed access to her is to respect that. This does not mean your work is not remarked upon, but it does mean that you do not have a reporter who has made a perfect recording of this whole conversation. It’s for you and Marcina. For her part, she listens intently as you work. One hand on her chin, leaning forward, eyes open with only an occasional blink. She takes a drink when you pause then leans forward again, and the scent of her breath is a faint aroma of pepper and cinnamon so near you. When you’re done, she sighs. “Maybe you’re right. I want you to be right.” There’s a building intensity to her words in that, a deep heart of fire. “I want an opponent who fights like you claim you can fight, who will devour the Jormungar itself. Show me something to learn One Day Defender.” There’s the heart of it. A driven girl like Marcina Villajero, she wants an opponent who can teach her something new, that’s what she hopes to get from you, why she recognized you and called you over. It must be an odd sort of hell for her. A studious girl who was eager to learn and grow and build her skills. Happily willing to compete for her society, with a keen mind and an undeniable talent who became The Best. Who do you study from when you’re The Best? Who can even be a peer? She doesn’t want Adriana’s business empire, nor Isabelle’s charities. She might have a family and friends she cares about supporting, of course, but her drive is all internal and to reach such a pinnacle when what she wants most of all is still to grow and to strive? [i]That[/i] is a special sort of hell. She loves to excel, Marcina Villajero, and that means there is a great generosity to her character because she needs others to excel up to her level for any of it to mean anything at all. To you, the same question you asked her. As you answer, tell her what you truly love most.