The hiss of pressurized oxygen. The lingering scent of blood and sweat. The glow of the monitors. Nostalgia threatened to drown Sóse in the enclosed cockpit when a chyron flashed across his field of vision. Turtle’s broadband electronic countermeasures picked up an incoming acoustic signal and sourced it back to the arena’s other occupant. The cybernetic operative screened the signal through hundreds of cycles of memetic kill-agents. Thoroughly satisfied, he accessed the message. The soft, low chime of the xenoform’s exoskeleton was an odd accompaniment to the warmth of Morgan’s trumpet as it broke out over the nimble patterns of Higgins’ drumming.

[b]"Enough of their games. Let's forge our own path home.”[/b]

[i]Turtle, any ideas on how to respond? We got a way to Close Encounters this?[/i]

Meanwhile Owl’s distinctive impulse thrusters silently accelerated its concealed form to Mach 6 while collapsing wavefronts of the resultant shockwaves. The covert aerial drone’s flight path traveled along the toroid’s curved walls as its EM field interpreter analyzed the unique structure of the battlefield. Thoughtforms, chromatic and crystallized, fluctuate underneath the scrutiny of Owl’s sophisticated instrumentation. The aspirations of children watching satellites streak across the night sky from conapt balconies. The determination of a blind Sub-Saharan woman adrift in an endless void. The despair of a husband seeing a gun held to his wife’s head as he chokes to death on his own blood. 

This measurement of millions across the noosphere is suddenly thrown off when the bipedal xenoform’s talons plunged into the battlefield. The interference created by the memetic backlash formed a Hermitian matrix, visualized as a coruscating sphere of ideospheric energy to Owl’s EM field interpreter. The drone addressed Sóse in its profound and reserved cadence a moment after the operative posed his question to Turtle.

[i]Analysis complete, Operative Hihnon. Beginning report. 

Toroidal structure consists of unusually high levels of concentrated ideospheric energy. Memetic backlash between toroid and xenoform’s unique emission field detected. 

Scans of examined xenomatter report a stibium-based lifeform with markers of Hume manipulation analogous to Scranton anchors or the null-effect of Operative Hihnon’s bio-force.

Calculations on prolonged exposure of ideospheric matter to Humes determine calcification of eigenvalues leading to an XK-Class event with 99.6% certainty.

Findings suggest immediate response. Shall I continue to observe and report my findings accordingly?[/i]

Sóse assents and begins to digest Owl’s report when Turtle’s drawl provides him with another morsel of information. 

[i]Think that thing can pick up wideband, Soz?[/i]

At the speed of hyper-accelerated thought, Sóse issues a series of commands; their effects immediately evident as several of Turtle’s systems engage. The majority of the monitors surrounding the cybernetic operative shift to relay the hexapedal tank’s visual feed. Through the glow of the screen, Sóse observed an array of tessellated neon cubes expand above a pale yellow murk that churned and crept along the battlefield. Reticles along Turtle’s many surveillance hubs dilate and contract, expanding Sóse’s field of vision while zeroing in on the xenoform that stood beneath a tetrad of malachite spheres. The subspace sensors of Turtle’s multiband array register n-dimensional activity, outlining the spheres in a white hot glow as a phantasmagoric forest of twisted trees, heavy boughs adorned with psychedelically plumaged birds.  

[i]Second message received and screened. Commencing playback.[/i]

[b]"Let's get ready to RUMBLE!"[/b]

[i]Interesting turn of events. Ping the ugly gonk back. Tell him the following: You set it up. I’ll knock it down.[/i]

Meanwhile, vents across Turtle’s central platform slid open and emitted thick plumes of obscurant smoke. The red-tinged fumes contained micropulverized graphite, copper nanowires, and technopolymer-coated microbeads. The smokescreen visually obscured the tank and prevented electromagnetic tracking. Simultaneously, the high-pitched whir of Turtle’s muon generator gave a nostalgic tug on the cybernetic operative’s heartstrings. Layer after layer of high-density muons surrounded the tank in a dome, separated by the breadth of Planck’s length. Lastly, the filmy kinetic lenses along the geodesic dome of Turtle’s hard light projector transitioned into translucent panels. A diode within the dome, synchronized with Sóse’s neural weave, transmitted a luminal lattice through the lenses that manifested as a winking emoji cast on the red-tinged smokescreen.