[b]Solarel[/b]

Shards shards shards

The whole world is glass and you are steel. There is no ceremony, there is no glory. The spirit understands its defeat. It struck in desperation, knowing it was already lost, and took the full brunt of your golden blade. Everything that it was dissipated into so much electrostatic radiation. 

You rest now in the Kathresis. For a blessed moment, everything is still and silent. The cave moss has no words of congratulations to offer you, nor the dim lights that remain any flicker or hum. 

After a moment, above you, peeking over the hole that is now the ceiling, is Annika Nornsdottr and Crescent, the cat from before. Annika is shouting, trying to gain your attention, asking if it’s safe to come down. She looks excited, but small. Crescent is at a wary ease, seeing no motion or combat.

They would congratulate you, if you would accept it. This is everything they hoped would happen, if perhaps not in this manner. 

Or perhaps you simply wish to leave now. None may stop you.

***

[b]Isabelle
[/b]
You can feel the facility beginning to shut down. It has lost its animating force. You still have access controls, indeed you’re the only one exercising control over facility equipment at the moment, but your role is not senior enough to keep the facility in full operation. It’s going down to minimal viable systems, low lights and basic maintenance only. 
You’re in the hangar. The remaining flight-ready mecha is there. It has no name, just a numerical designation in the system logs, X-S-337. Command and it will open for you. Local nanobots in your immediate vicinity continue to be responsive to your needs, the gestures are working like a charm. Except the lava floors, apparently that’s an energy level beyond the nanobots. Their disassembly has to do with minute filament materials that can be pulled apart and reassembled in different shapes, they do not produce adequate heat or other power output to melt industrial metal. 

Are you really so unlucky? To be sure, nobody currently here cares over-much about you. Perhaps Solarel will come looking? But nobody else. Yet even so, here you are on an alien planet that barely anybody has explored, finding a facility of a lost species that barely anybody knows about, and you’ve got a direct technology interface for…some reason that probably bears contemplation later and a new, if small, mecha that you can claim. It’s not exactly the set of things you wanted, but… Or perhaps you feel more petulant than that and remain disappointed that the dreams you had for such adventure did not go as you planned?

In any event, you still have your map, you can get to Solarel, Annika, and Crescent as you please, or take the mecha back to the shuttle. Or simply leave at this point. The immediate world is your oyster, though the consequences of all this will ripple outwards upon your return. What do you do now?

***

[b]Dolly and Jade
[/b]
She’s a strong one, this leopard. You could probably have realized that when she leapt up to the scaffolding. She likes being pressed too, likes that you’re trying to lift her. It’s a challenge, it’s a game, it’s the thrill of the hunt in her spirit. 

You’ve heard of the Red Band before. Freedom, freedom above all else is their motto. Their rules are the simplest rules: don’t kill your own, don’t steal from your own, but beyond that they fight and they play, they kidnap, they brand. And everyone else in the universe is fair game for them. 

It doesn’t seem like the leopard had been planning a tussle when she leapt up. She’d made a spot, gotten excited, moved to draw attention. But now that you’ve provoked her…her tail flicks in excitement and she shifts her weight on her feet, suddenly leaning into your pull, overbalancing the both of you, causing Dolly to tumble backward, the leopard landing on top. Her strong hand is on your chest, she can feel your heart beating. 

The others move to prevent any of your engineers from rushing up the steps, led by the Jaguar who claimed to be your next opponent. 

“I think I should take you, cutie. It would send a lesson to all our opponents not to underestimate the Red Band. And you’d look so good strung up inside my cockpit." 

She smiles and it’s baring teeth, but her eyes flick up to the mecha chassis. She wants Dolly, but she also wants a rise out of Jade. She wants to see what it means for the goddess to bare fangs. This is all impromptu of course, this doesn’t have the feeling of a heavily thought-through plan, it has the feeling of improvisation by a bunch of cats who are supremely confident in themselves. 

How do you respond to this sacrilege?

***

[b]Mirror[/b]

It’s dumplings for days. Or at least two solid meals. The delivery person, a young Terenian, was loaded down with a bag stacked high with containers of various meat dumplings so that she could barely even see when she first answered the door. She nearly dropped the bags as you started taking the top ones and she saw you were totally naked. You can see the moment when her eyes dart back and forth as she’s rapidly wondering if this is normal, if she should be embarrassed, if there’s something she doesn’t know about Hybrasilian culture, and perhaps whether it’s rude to double check if there was already a tip for her as part of the payment since she doesn’t see any way for you to offer one. 

A blush slowly rises to her cheeks and she quickly hands you the rest of the bags, which smell of steamed meat and some kind of shellfish. Enough to make your mouth water. 

Slate starts taking things, laying them out in the small room, spooning some noodles onto a plate that she starts slurping greedily, followed by a satisfied burp. 

“Alright Mira, you can dress after we finish eating, if you feel like it. But meanwhile, tell me about the sabotage. That was why you went there originally, right? Talk to a Zaldarian with skill in nanobot tech and figure out how somebody could have gotten to the Hangar and to our stuff without any of us being the wiser.”

Slate rests an elbow on the low table where she’s set the food, leans forward intently, munches on a shredded meat bun with her other hand, biting out a third of it so you can see the insides. A drop of sauce almost falls out before she tilts it up so it soaks into the bread instead.  “So” she says, swallowing, “you get anything on that front?”