[center][h3]Everdream Valley - Port Meridian[/h3]
Level 7 Goldlewis (116/70) Level 6 Sandalphon (59/60)
Blazermate, Susie, and Roland’s [@Archmage MC], Midna’s [@DracoLunaris], Geralt and Zenkichi’s [@Multi_Media_Man], Pit’s [@Yankee], Roxas’ [@Double]
[b]Word Count:[/b] 1269[/center]

In the end, only the taciturn Roland had decided to accompany Goldlewis on his hunt for a slow-paced meal. Although Goldlewis definitely wouldn’t have minded more company for lunch, he found himself appreciating the chance to be more or less alone with his thoughts after so much time spent among his fellow Seekers. With no conversation necessary, nor any need to uphold a certain image of himself, he could afford to relax. Through the window, the cloudy sky seemed to be darkening, and he could hear a faint rumble of thunder in the distance. Considering the time of day, the Pelican Inn probably should have bustled with activity, but for one reason or another an atmosphere of leisurely quiet hung over it today, allowing Goldlewis to recline and contemplate in peace. Though the responsible part of him felt obligated to scrutinize and overthink for the sake of preparedness, and the old war veteran in him urged him not to get too comfortable while danger still loomed, Goldlewis tried to push aside his restless inclinations. However brief this repose might be, and whatever trials lay ahead, he knew that this moment of peace and quiet ought to be enjoyed while it lasted. Of course, his enjoyment of this break increased by quite a lot when the waitress began to arrive with the food.

First Goldlewis received his [url=https://i.imgur.com/KQMqQTV.png]Dumud Chowder[/url], featuring dense fish rather than clams, lavishly covered with a thick, creamy soup. Its mild flavors, enhanced with Worcestershire sauce and garlic, were a splendid marriage of earth and sea, and it filled the veteran with vigor. In no time at all he downed the whole bowl, leaving him regretful that he’d finished so quickly.

Luckily, his second dish arrived soon after. After whetting his appetite with the tasty seafood stew, Goldlewis dug into the [url=https://i.imgur.com/alRqlPe.png]Rushoar Hot Dog[/url] with aplomb. It boasted a thick sausage, much more substantial than the typical frankfurter, wedged between fluffy buns and garnished with both relish and mustard. To his surprise, he found the crispy meat itself not just spicy, but a little gamey, laden with the ferocity of the wilderness. As Goldlewis battled and vanquished the big game hot dog, he achieved a feeling of primal satisfaction.

Finally, the [url=https://i.imgur.com/Uxp4PYC.png]Eikthyrdeer Loco Moco[/url] arrived, a gravy-smothered burger of ground venison on a bed of rice, itself topped fried egg and green onion garnish, served in a shallow tin. While both of the other foods he tried turned out to be great in their own rights, Goldlewis realized after one bite that this dish was truly something special. The sublime combination struck him as the true epitome of comfort food, rich and decadent. Paired with an ice-cold cola to offset the savory warmth with refreshing sweetness, the dish brought him nothing short of joy. He finished his meal very pleased, his expectations thoroughly exceeded.

Roland, meanwhile, received both dishes at the same time. The herb-roasted [url=https://i.imgur.com/1IwRHMf.png]Caprity[/url] and [url=https://i.imgur.com/TcWauX8.png]Lamball[/url] were more than superficially similar, as both included sweet wild berries that provided an aromatic, built-in compliment to the flavor of the meat. A discerning palate, however, could differentiate between and individually appreciate the intricacies of chevron and mutton.

When the waitress arrived to check on the two, Goldlewis made his appreciation known. “My compliments to the chef,” he said, smiling as warmly as he could. “A meal like that really hit the spot. Does a body good.”

“I’m glad you like it!” The waitress returned his smile as she handed him his check.

[i]Thirty two hundred and twenty zenny,[/i] he read, thinking nothing of it as he reached for his wallet. Once he pulled it out, however, Goldlewis got a sinking feeling. “Uh oh.” He had just twenty thousand on him, and no way to connect to his bank account. Though now that he thought about it, he’d spent most of his savings in order to acquire the Seiran hideout from Moneybags the bear. [i]And what a good, long-term investment that turned out to be.[/i] He groaned, squeezing his eyes shut. With all his focus on the conflict in Midgar and the campaign against Galeem, he’d forgotten to pay attention to his finances. He looked up, seeing no staff around but the waitress tending a table. A lesser man might have opted to dine and dash in this situation, trusting in his strength to sort out any trouble, but Goldlewis couldn’t do such a thing. With a sigh he beckoned the waitress over, then explained his predicament.

The woman kept her expression neutral. “I’ll have to speak to the boss. Excuse me.” She disappeared into the kitchen, and Goldlewis sat there, stewing. After another minute, the waitress returned. “Please come with me.” The veteran looked miserable, but he rose to follow her. Twelve dollars wasn’t much in the greater scheme of things, but theft was theft. It fell to him to take responsibility and sort this out.

After being directed into the kitchen, Goldlewis stepped inside. It turned out to be much lower-tech than he imagined, with somewhat rustic [url=https://i.imgur.com/AHuWkkM.png]electric stoves[/url] lit not by gas, but by crew of bright orange [url=https://static0.gamerantimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/palworld_foxparks.jpg]Foxparks[/url]. Live animals in a professional kitchen came as quite the shock, not to mention a possible health and safety violation, but the boss surprised Goldlewis almost as much. Both the boss and the head chef, the man was a [url=https://i.imgur.com/WY0vVfG.png]musclebound giant[/url] with a wild hairstyle and a mustache that climbed higher than his eyebrows. He seemed larger than life, standing eye to eye with Goldlewis himself, and when he spoke, he did so with a naturally booming voice. “I am Bravo Peperoncine, owner of Pelican Inn!” he announced, turning to face the newcomer. “And you are?”

“Goldlewis Dickinson,” the veteran replied evenly.

Bravo crossed his arms. “So you’re the one, eh? Sounds like you came up a little short, my friend!”

Goldlewis rubbed the back of his head self-consciously. “Yeah…stupid of me. Just had a lot on my mind lately, is all. If there’s any way I could pay off what I owe ya, I’m all ears.”

“Hmm!” Bravo stroked his whiskers, grinning. As he talked, he enhanced his speech with frequent bombastic gestures. “Well, as you can see my cooks are all Foxparks, and Foxparks don’t need money. In other words, I’m not in the habit of paying kitchen staff. How are you at waiting tables?”

Goldlewis narrowed his eyes, not pleased at the way this was going. The knowledge that he’d genuinely screwed up made him uncomfortable, and he wanted to get this taken care of as soon as possible, not be made a fool of. “I don’t reckon I’d get much in tips.”

The chef chuckled. “You may be right. Well, perhaps there’s another way.” He peered more closely at his customer. “You seem like a sturdy fellow. Someone who knows his way around a fight. There are precious few such men around Everdream Valley, and I cannot allow my Undefeated Kitchen Champion Style to lose its edge. Perhaps you can help me hone my skills once more. Spar with me!” He pounded his fists together. “You’ve satisfied your hunger, after all. Satisfy [i]mine[/i], and we’ll call it even!”

Goldlewis breathed in, then cracked his neck, first on one side and then the other. “If that’s all it’d take…I suppose I got some calories to work off, anyhow.”

[center][h3]The Under - Home of Tears[/h3]
Level 13 Ms Fortune (109/130)
The Koopa Troop’s [@DracoLunaris], Primrose and Therion’s [@Yankee], Sectonia’s [@Archmage MC], Ganondorf’s [@Double], Osvald’s [@Dark Cloud]
[b]Word Count:[/b] 1936[/center]

After a minute or two spent hurtling at high speed through the pitch-black interior of a warp pipe, mostly straight down, the exit finally spit Nadia out–straight into ice-cold water. The shock left her reeling for a moment, but after tumbling for a moment she managed to get her bearings, reorient herself, and swim away from the warp pipe so that nobody else crashed into her on their way out. That was just basic pool etiquette after all, however strange the pool.

Mercifully, the water seemed to be reasonably clean and clear, allowing her to look around. In addition to bright-red cheep cheeps, it featured metal support struts and underwater spotlights that illuminated a submerged section of race track, tilted at an angle that allows its curve to both enter and exit the water. Right now though, Nadia only cared about the ‘exit’ part. She kicked her legs and surged toward the surface, not afraid to spend a little blood if it meant getting out of the drink that much faster. After another moment she burst from the water with a gasp, filling her lungs with air. 

[center][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oj_1wAETSA[/youtube][/center]

The feral clambered out into dark, moist grass, to find herself surrounded by the multicolored glow of bioluminescent mushrooms. Beyond lay the Home of Tears, beautiful in its melancholy. Though brief, her immersion left her with a nagging feeling of familiarity, and now she could see why; this place was none other than the fungal garden surrounding the base of a certain clock tower, and when Nadia looked up she found [url=https://i.imgur.com/9tlCh5r.png]Gallo Tower[/url] looming over her in all its enormity, its ruby-red clock face still broken from the fight against Moebius P the morning before last. She recalled her somewhat ill-advised shortcut back to the bottom, plunging from that immense height down into this very basin. Remembering all this, she couldn’t help but laugh. The events of that day sure seemed bananas at the time, but after Pizza Tower, Mercy Dreams, and the dream battle against the Radiance, her battle against the bedridden bozo was small potatoes. Who could fathom how much nuttier this adventure would get tomorrow?

Sadly, her reminiscence came to an end in a fit of shivering. The unfortunate reality was that in the Home of Tears, being on land wasn’t much drier than being underwater. If anything, the cool cave air on her sopping-wet skin made the chill even worse, despite the lack of wind. As always, the water from Ash Lake high above descended upon the somber city in a terrific deluge, and when Nadia reached back to pull her hood up she got a nasty surprise. “Aw, what? This coat doesn’t have a hood anymore?” Her ears drooped as she stared out through the downpour, totally drenched. Chucho could warm her heart, but not her body, so the two hurried off in search of shelter. “Ugh. At least with P gone, we have free rain of the place.”

Beyond the fungi-filled courtyard lay the Royal Quarter, the city’s well-to-do northern district. The moment Nadia set foot outside, sinking her mantreads ankle-deep in a puddle in the process, she spotted a familiar feline felon hunkered underneath a huge umbrella with Osvald. “Nyaow we’re talking.” She took off at a run, her boots splashing across the carapace cobbles as she made a beeline for the shelter of Therion’s parasol. “Room for one more?” Without waiting for permission, she inserted herself into the pair’s personal space. “Sheesh!” With a sigh of relief she tried -unsuccessfully- to slick her hair back, then settled for wiping the rain from her eyes. While she did notice that Osvald had been freed, right now she had a backlog of rain puns in dire need of delivery. By now, Therion knew to brace himself when he saw Nadia’s eyes alight with mischief. “Bad weather for us cats, huh? I don't mind a little purrecipitation, but I forgot just how hard it rains down here. It’s just nyansense. After we’re outta here, someone’s gotta hang meowt to dry.”

Given both the weather and the one hundred percent chance of additional puns, the Seekers didn’t intend to stick around. Once everyone was present and accounted for, the team could set off through the Home of Tears with Nadia in the lead. After unrolling the [url=https://i.imgur.com/9zkps44.png]map[/url] from Cornifer, the feral confirmed that King’s Station lay to the northwest, across a long expanse of ink-black water. With the team at her back, she scampered through rainy streets bathed in the soft pink light of fancy streetlamps atop wrought-iron fences. When everyone reached one of the district’s western docks, Nadia leaped right off the edge and onto the water itself, her rigging deployed to keep her skating weightlessly atop the rippling surface. Chucho joined her, happily floating in the air beside his owner. Rika and Bowser could emulate her, and several others could just fly, but for those less fortunate a solution lay close at hand.

“Over there!” she called, directing her friends’ attention down the waterway. A giant paper boat the size of a catamaran was piloting itself toward the dock, letters trickling from its ink-stained pages that rose into the sky like smoke to hang amidst the downpour overhead. The others would need to time a jump to get aboard, but it wasn’t at all difficult, and even if they missed this boat was just one of five or six on this waterway, ceaselessly making its rounds in a counter-clockwise loop up from Fountain Central toward King’s Station and back.

Soon, the team reached King’s Station. The place looked every bit as dark and abandoned as Nadia remembered it, clearly seldom-used by the Home of Tears inhabitants. She led her friends through a [url=https://i.imgur.com/zm4Uv1m.png]dark passage[/url] past faded signs and broken furniture to the [url=https://i.imgur.com/22xF51q.png]station itself[/url], a room of green and tan tiles where a falling water spun a large waterwheel, then flowed off down a channel through an opening in the right-side wall, where an aqueduct suspended over a pitch-black abyss led off into the darkness. Out of everyone here, only Nadia knew that the aqueduct somehow looped back around, feeding right back into the waterfall that turned the wheel. Jesse had left them after all, and both Rubick and Artorias were dead. It was a sobering thought, almost as dreadful as the otherworldly creature that lurked at the end of the shadowy tunnel to Platform B. “There’s one of those [i]things[/i] down there,” she warned the others. “Something like Robin, but...different. It called itself the Nowhere Monarch. Pretty freaky.” If the others really wanted she could help deal with it later, but right now she concerned herself with Magikrab. The little crustacean happily opened the way to Platform B when prompted, where a stag waited to spirit the Seeker away through the Stagmer-line back to Dirtmouth.

Once back up top, the urge to go out and breathe deep of the Chasm’s crisp mountain air tempted her, but Nadia remained with the others as they switched trains to connect to the Nyakuza Metro. Riding a giant stag beetle had its charms, sure, but Nadia much preferred kicking back in a [url=https://i.ytimg.com/vi/50So6lgHeDg/maxresdefault.jpg]subway train[/url] pulled by a giant orange cat. For a good long moment, she stared at the do-not-pet sign hanging from the kitty’s harness, her arms crossed. “Well, that sign can’t stop me because I can’t read,” she lied. She quickly patted the cat, then hurried after the others with a smile on her face. Once everyone boarded, its puller gave a loud meow, then began to move. As it pushed through the tunnel’s magical cat flap and into extradimensional space, Nadia settled in for the ride.

Of course, getting comfortable proved difficult whilst soaked to the bone. The trip so far hadn’t been conducive to conversation, but with nothing to do but sit and wait Nadia aired out her thoughts straight away. “Ugh, I’ve gotta get a new outfit,” she groaned, peeling off her sodden trench coat. The leotard beneath functioned as a one-piece swimsuit, not exactly appropriate for a train ride, but anything beat catching a cold in waterlogged clothes. The coat plopped down on the empty seat beside her, water pooling around it. “My jacket used to be sick as hell, but my fusions sure did a number on it, huh. Now it ain’t fashionable [i]or[/i] functional.” She removed and upended her mantreads to get the water out, then busied herself detaching her limbs to air dry them via vigorous waving.

By the time the train pushed through another cat flap and entered the Metro, Nadia herself had dried off, but her coat was still soaked through. Grumbling, she retied her belt around her waist and left with her coat draped over her arm. The moment she deboarded, though, her spirits rose once more. 

[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/p989MMI.png[/img][/center]

After all, the Nyakuza Metro was a bustling, neon-and-brick metropolis made by cats and for cats, a feline-themed paradise. The yellow-eyed, black-furred metro cats seemed to be going about their business as usual, and though the place possessed a transitory atmosphere, Nadia Fortune felt right at home.. She darted past a public scratching post and slid to a stop beneath a set of heat lamps arranged like an old-fashioned hair salon. She slid a pon into a slot, plopped down in the seat, and basked in its warmth. Tantalizing smells drifted from the Metro’s ubiquitous food trucks, and curiosities lay almost everywhere one looked. As she sat, Nadia found herself engaged by a digital standee playing a public safety announcement. It captivated passers-by with a red dot that darted back and forth across text that read [i]Stay alert! The Metro can be a dangerous place![/i]

The realization made her smile ruefully. Though things looked pretty harmless at the moment, she and the others knew just how dangerous this place could be after Rush Hour. Once that Consul put a hit on them, it had been a mad scramble to escape the Metro before the Seekers drowned in the literal tide of money-crazed cats. When Nadia turned her gaze upward, however, she found nobody silhouetted against the [url=https://i.imgur.com/t5Ozgnw.png]giant clock face[/url] that overlooked the crowded streets. Only the Metro, which stretched up hundreds and hundreds of feet, its higher levels dominated by cat tower apartments. The eternal night that shrouded this indoor city suggested a roof of some kind high above, but Nadia sure couldn’t see it.

She turned her attention to a Metro schedule board instead, rising from her chair for a closer look. “Gerudo…Gerudo…bingo! Looks like it’s on the Yellow Line,” she observed. When she inspected the route details, her eyebrows shot up. “Hey, Carnival Town’s on that line! That’s where I crashed for a while. We should go there too, it’s super fun!” She turned toward the others. “I guess we gotta grab enough pons for a Yellow Line Pass, huh? No problem.” Just like last time, the green gems could be found just about everywhere in the Metro, though most demanded some agility. Well, a little parkour never hurt anyone. Full of pep, Nadia started doing stretches, readying herself for another quick romp through Nyakuza Metro.

[center][h3]Vandelay Campus - Research and Development[/h3][/center]

“Hey, Tora…he-eey…hey!”

When Mayer’s voice finally got through to him, Tora jolted as if forcefully woken from deep slumber. He might have fallen from his stool if the Anaty engineer hadn’t already put her arm behind him, anticipating that she’d startle the poor guy despite her best attempts. Tora shook his head, rubbing his eyes, then peered at her blearily. “Meh, meh. What want?”

The young woman wore a rueful smile, her amusement only masking the concern on her face. “I want you to stop overworking yourself so much, for one. It won’t do any good for anyone if you collapse from exhaustion, you know.” Mayer sighed. “Buuut you’re not gonna listen, are you? Not until Poppi is back.”

“That right.”

Mayer looked down at the table in front of Tora, her eyebrows furrowed. Ever since his arrival in the experimental division of Vandelay Campus, the nopon had adamantly refused to attend to anything beyond his most basic needs, and to his credit his single-minded obsession had borne fruit. With Zando’s demise the company’s project pipeline ground to a complete halt, freeing up his new friends Mayer and Macaron to give Tora’s own endeavor everything they had. In just short one day the abundant resources, tools, and technologies of Research and Development had allowed him to concept, fabricate, and assemble an entirely new chassis for his beloved companion. The impressive results lay on the workstation before them, like a patient on an operating table, but this could hardly be called a finished project. In some ways the machine could be considered an improvement, being professionally crafted in a full-scale facility rather than cobbled together in a hobbyist workshop. It boasted the finest hardware available as well; without the ether tech of his homeland, Tora had given up on replicating his grandfather Soosoo’s Ether Furnace in favor of a reciprocating Vandelay reactor, enabling digistruction and a high level of throughput.

Of course, the makeshift team couldn’t come up with a Vandelay analog for every aspect of the original. The thing that lay before Tora was still just lifeless metal. Everything that went into creating it only foreshadowed the true challenge: rewriting Poppi’s source code from scratch. It was a monumental task, an impossible one, and it brought Tora great anguish. Even after hours of trying, he’d made almost no progress. After all, even if he really could recreate every aspect of her personality down to the most minute detail, would the robot that came online really be Poppi? Or would it just be a copy? An imitation? Tora was no philosopher, but he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that Poppi possessed something that couldn’t be recaptured by mere code. 

Mayer didn’t want to think about it. Though she treasured her Meeboos like pets, they didn’t even capture the significance of the animals that inspired them, let alone a human. The fact that this fuzzy round nopon managed to make a simulacrum so much like a human in the first place boggled her mind. Now that he’d lost her, how could he ever recreate that? In her own experience, losing something as simple as a blueprint and having to recreate it was enough to fill her with despair. But convincing Tora to abandon his obsession seemed almost as impossible. Still, she felt obliged to try.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” She gestured toward the door. “Only a few hours ‘til Midgar goes dark. I know the geothermal power down here’s enough to the lights on however long you need ‘em, but the tech’s not the point. Me and Macaron, we got into this to help people, and the people are going. Wherever they end up, that’s where we need to be.” Mayer gave him a warm smile. “I mean, you’re clearly some kinda genius. You could really help people.”

If anything, Tora seemed ashamed. “...That okay, meh. Tora can’t help anyone if Tora not even help self. Please go ahead, meh. Tora stay until Poppi is back.”

Mayer took a deep breath and hugged the nopon, squeezing him goodbye. Though happy to be a ray of sunshine wherever she went, there were some clouds so dark that even she couldn’t break through. Pushing any harder in this situation would just be in bad taste. “Good luck, Tora,” she told him, gathering her things to leave. Her Meeboos crowded around her, beeping as they jostled and played. Her small stature really belied just how much stuff she could carry all across her person. “I hope you find her again soon.”

Then Mayer was gone. Tora pulled his AR goggles down, and got back to work. The virtual environment employed by the PGR-0101 units in R & D enabled ultra high speed development, but even with such incredible tools at his wingtips Tora’s progress continued to be agonizingly slow. He mostly just sat and stewed, staring at the chassis in front of him, painfully aware of just what it was missing, as well as just how unattainable that was. Tora didn’t even realize he nodded off until he crashed face-first into the workstation. His stool slid out from beneath him with a loud scrape, and the next moment the nopon tumbled to the floor. When he pulled the goggles from his head, tears soaked into the fur of his cheeks.

“Meh, meh, meh,” Tora moaned, struggling to get up. “Mayer? Macaron? …Mr. Svarog? Anyone!?” But no, they were all long gone, friends both new and old. Around him the walls of the engineering workshop enclosed him like a prison, full of nothing but junk. He gave up and lay there on the floor, surrounded by his failure, completely and utterly alone.

In the near-total silence, quiet except for his sniffles, Tora heard something new. [i]Click, click, click, click[/i]. Sharp, light footsteps, echoing down the hall and through the open door. He rolled into a sitting position. “M-Mayer?”

But no, that couldn’t be it. His Anaty acquaintance wore sneakers, not heels. But who could this be?

A black shape blotted out the hallway lights. Then it swept into the room, tall but not quite shapeless, and Tora realized that it must be someone clothed and hooded in black. He suddenly recognized the telltale uniform and blinked in surprise, his sorrow turned to alarm. “Meh, meh!?”

“Relax, furball,” the black-coated woman told him, a slight edge to her voice. She seemed to recognize this, and tried to sound more gentle, difficult though it was. “Today, I’m just a delivery gal. Here, someone wanted you to have this.” She pulled a small package from her robe and tossed it toward him. “Happy birthday.”

The package bonked off Tora’s head and fell into his wings. He took it in his wings, his expression quizzical. “It not Tora’s birthday. Tora not think so, at least…”

“Who said it was [i]your[/i] birthday?”

The Organization XIII member waved her hand at the parcel, and Tora began to unwrap it. As he pulled off the strings and peeled back the layers, he became aware of a glow from within, faintly shining with all the colors of the rainbow. Finally, with wings trembling, he tore apart the last layer of paper. Inside glimmered a mote of dazzling light, a [url=https://i.imgur.com/cUX760y.png]precious face[/url] within.

Tora’s whole body shuddered. His voice quaked. “P….p…Poppi. She’s…she’s…”

“She’s [i]there[/i].” Tora glanced at Xatow when she spoke, equal parts crushed and confused. “You’ve studied the machines, haven't you? The androids, the unmanned gears. The black boxes, you’ve seen them, right? And you’ve gotta know that spirits are data by now, yeah?” She sighed, exasperated. “C’mon, put it together, smarty-pants. That sad little face of yours is starting to piss me off.”

After a moment, Tora gasped. He seized the spirit and hurtled through the workshop, sending various components flying in his mad hunt. Xatow watched the ruckus with her arms crossed, not even trying to be heard over the clamor. When Tora finally found what he was looking for, he practically fell over himself in his haste to get back to the operating table. His stool still lay on the floor, but Xatow reached out her hands and gave him a boost.

Once up on the table, Tora ripped his programming rig from the chassis, then tried to calm down, control his breathing, and slow his pounding heart. Carefully, with utmost precision, he opened the black box. The spirit of a Cyberlife android leaked out like an egg. Once the box was empty he inserted the spirit, sealed it shut, then inserted it onto the chest cavity of the robot chassis before him. After activating the Vandelay reactor, he closed off the machine’s interior, then stepped back, waiting with clenched cheeks as the painstakingly-assembled systems came online. The second trickled by as indicator lights all across the robotic frame began to glow, until finally, the eyes popped open. Their irises were orange, just as designed, but the light that shone through them was electric blue.

Tora stared, not daring to move, nor even to breathe. The fact that a machine produced by three genius engineers managed to turn on was no surprise. Everything hinged on that light, the light behind the eyes as they slid in Tora’s direction.

“...Greetings, Masterpon.”

In an instant, Tora’s heart sank. He could never forget the first words that Poppi ever uttered to him–well, except for that one incident, which certainly wasn’t his fault. Those weren’t words he wanted to hear. Had this eleventh hour miracle only achieved a new beginning, swept clean of everything he’d come to treasure…?

After another moment, Poppi couldn’t contain it anymore. She burst out laughing, her voice high and bright, tinged by an electronic filter but filled with sincere joy. Tora watched, dumbstruck, as she sat up, her smiling face turned toward him.

“Sorry, sorry! The look on your face…! I know, I know, I shouldn’t have scared you like that. But I can’t help it. You know I can’t help teasing you, right?” Poppi reached out and seized the stunned nopon, then hugged him tight. “Ahh…this feels good. You know, I had the strangest dream. It was really scary, I’m so glad it’s over with.” As her diagnostic subroutine concluded, she laughed quietly. “Wow, all new hardware? You’ve been busy, huh. But…weird, I’m not talking like a nopon, am I? My dialector must be broken…”

After overcoming his shock, Tora hugged her too, his tears flowing freely. “Meheheh, it fine, it fine! Not problem at all, meh meh. Tora just happy…so, so happy that Poppi is ba-ha-haaaack!” His voice finally broke, giving way to joyous blubbering.

“Sheesh. All that bawling,” Xatow shook her head despairingly. “You’re going to get your tummy wet.”

Tora and Poppi both turned toward her. The jubilant nopon seemed to see straight through her brusque demeanor. “Without spirit from friend, Tora never have fixed Poppi! Thank you, meh! Thank you thousand times!”

The Organization XIII member shrugged. “Yeah, yeah. Well, we need you guys. [i]They[/i] need you, too. So how about we quit moping around here and get a move on?”

Still holding Tora, Poppi gently leveraged herself off the table, trying not to knock too much stuff down onto the floor. Her completed chassis resembled her QT mode superficially, but with predominantly sleek white machine parts on both [url=https://i.imgur.com/jzbIEaq.png]arms[/url] and legs, with both red and yellow accents. Her stylings included a spiky lavender topknot ponytail rather than twintails, and her previous maid elements had been replaced by a more modern headset, ribbon tie, and pleated skirt. Of course, at the end of the day appearances mattered little to either of them. Being together again was enough. “Are we going somewhere?” Poppi inquired.

“I’ve arranged pickup,” Xatow told her, already headed for the door. “So come on. Don’t wanna be late.”

Without further ado she left, leaving the dynamic duo behind. Reunited at last, and happy as could be, Tora and Poppi ran after her, ready to face the future together.