Chương 18: LOG-015.

We'd returned to the starfighter in a damn hurry, for obvious reasons. The next half hour or so (in human time, to be specific) had been spent nervously watching our surroundings before we'd finally determined that no, we hadn't been followed and needed to make an immediate emergency lift off. Eventually, Vermilion had chosen to busy herself with doing her level best to clean both the interior and exterior of the craft, trembling hands nervously dusting and checking the surface of its armour.

I'd left the crimson Pearl to her coping mechanism, instead focusing on bringing out four... complicated objects. Limb enhancers. Yeah. They were interesting devices, to say the very least. An entire arsenal of tools and what could potentially be considered weapons if one were generous about it, specifically designed to make up for the deficiencies various Gem types suffered near the dawn of Era Two. All condensed into four attachable modules that would extend a given Gem's... well, limbs.

I knew for a fact that the Peridots aboard the Retaliator had possessed updated models, made to assist in general ship maintenance and, in a pinch, anti-boarding operations. The set that I pulled out from my gemstone were distinctly sleeker when compared to the bulky, durable units the technicians used, which made sense considering they served a decidedly different, if similar purpose.

The Reef would never require a Peridot to enter any form of conflict after all, especially when one considered that the largest threat within that horrid place would likely be a 'malfunctioning' Pearl, at best. Bringing an arm up, I hesitated for a second, before slowly sliding my hand into the appropriate hollow, near the back of the enhancer. Then I held back a yelp as I felt the thing tighten around the limb, effectively fitting itself to me.

Compared to the generally smaller appendages of a Peridot, my own arms remained a fair bit longer, resulting in my elbow sticking out from the protective embrace of the tool as a consequence of my 'longer' stature. It was the sensation of connection that truly made my eyes widen however, just as several detached 'fingers' floated up from the end of the enhancer, taking on a loose approximation of a hand.

"Woah..." Clenching my hand made the faux fingers take on the shape of a fist, prompting me to go through a few different gestures. Pointing. A thumbs up. Even flipping the bird. It was just a little comical, and most definitely not at all what the things had been designed for, but what did I care? Getting used to my now much longer arm, I finally grabbed hold of the other three limb enhancers, slipping my legs into the 'shoes' like a long pair of boots and carefully fitting my hand into the final device.

Standing up straight took a second as I adjusted to the unique experience of effectively being attached to advanced stilts, but my sense of balance helped in that regard. I took a second to look at my now slightly smaller looking surroundings, before smiling as I brought up my new 'hand' once more.

"Hm. I fit the colour, at least." A squeak made me turn my head quickly, catching Vermilion staring at me out of the corner of my vision. For whatever reason, a light dusting of dark red was apparent on the Pearl's face, even as she slowly continued to wipe a rag against the interior of the cockpit, all while keeping a wide pair of eyes on my form.

Blinking and slowly shaking my head, I turned back to inspecting my new toys, trying to get the floating fingers to form the projected screens I always saw the ship technicians walking around with. This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. The blushing Pearl was just a bit off-putting, but I figured it was better not to look a weird gift horse in the mouth.

I really didn't need her questioning where I'd gotten the damned things from, and I most definitely didn't want to explain why I'd gotten technology that a Pearl would most certainly not be carrying around under any normal circumstances.

I'd need to add Peridot Facet 2I5P, Cut 6XA to the list of Gems I needed to thank some day. Assuming she was alive, at least. Because seriously, despite being sort of intuitive, I'd likely have spent the better part of a few days trying to figure out just how to activate each module inherent to the devices without the offhand quirks the technician had occasionally talked about in between either tweaking her limb enhancers' systems or admiring my dance routines.

Instead, I'd figured out most of the basics within an hour or so. I couldn't quite transform my fingers into an energy blaster or anything like that, unfortunately. But I could do things like directly interface with Gem technology, or utilize a hand to propel myself through the air. Or even project an extremely thin cutting beam of energy in order to snip stuff like wiring or manually adjust the shape of this or that object.

It was the ability to 'speak' to machines that proved the most immediately helpful, however. For one, I now knew for a fact that our stolen starfighter was equipped with a transponder beacon. Yeah, that thing wasn't exactly working anymore, for some strange reason. After that brief bit of careful but necessary sabotage, I'd spent a fair bit of time just flying around from spot to spot, mostly near the surface of the massive ship we'd decided to hide in the shadow of.

I still hadn't found any kind of actual entrance, but I was starting to suspect that my way into the enormous wreck might just be from somewhere beneath the hull, considering it seemed to follow the basic Era One lander designs. My position in the air had also let me spot a few more of the crawlers, even if from an extreme distance. They mostly did as their namesake dictated, clambering up, around, into and out of the many ruined buildings around them.

Occasionally, one or two would pass each other, with little more than a chitter indicating that they'd even noticed another of their kind. It was the husks that drew my attention the most, though. Almost exclusively scattered at ground level, several mangled looking crawlers gave me the feeling that the autonomous machines weren't the only things prowling around the long since dead city. My current theory was that whatever had been damaging the drones mostly came out at night.

It was either that or the crawlers had been damaging themselves, for whatever reason.

"Viridian!" Glancing down at my fellow Pearl from my position atop a tall pile of rubble, I sighed and began to make my way back towards our 'camp.' We'd likely find out whether there were unspeakable horrors lurking in the darkness soon enough, considering the fact that any light making it through the atmospheric smog was already beginning to fade as the star this world orbited made its exit for the day.

Howls. The sun had finally dipped below the mostly obscured horizon, painting the sky in deep hues of violet, grey and black with only the faintest glimmers of distant stars visible through the not quite storm covering the planet. All the while, multiple warbling howls (and sometimes an utterly horrifying roar) echoed through the distant plains in and out of the city, prompting the occasional nervous shudder through my lightform.

Vermillion had finished her cleaning a good while ago, and was now using a big rock as a makeshift seat, fiddling with a small object I'd recovered while exploring one of the nearby buildings that didn't have crawlers scrambling all over it. The nervous energy that had driven her cleaning frenzy seemed to have settled into a focused determination as she tried to coax the little gadget back to life, her eyes narrowed and tongue occasionally darting out of her mouth to lick at her pursed lips.

I was pretty sure she was taking inspiration from me, which was... well, good for her. Maybe. It also meant that I absolutely lacked the heart to tell my focused Batchmate that I was about ninety percent certain the small, brightly coloured cylindrical device was, in all likelyhood, some kind of toy flashlight. I couldn't blame her, however. My own 'project' wasn't faring much better either.

A wrecked crawler torso sat before me, its left shoulder carefully sliced off and all sorts of internal wiring and mechanisms exposed to the toxic air around us. Clicking my teeth and getting up from the brief resting position I'd taken, I rolled my own shoulder in sympathy and got back to work, trying to figure out what the thing actually was, and just how it ticked.

At the very least, it helped serve as a distraction from the constant howling, alongside what sounded like creatures violently impacting against each other and fighting, deep within the city streets. Tommorow, I'd see whether I could find a safe spot to release one of my 'prisoners' for a bit of impromptu interrogation. The Lapis Lazuli, probably, since just keeping her away from any source of water or moisture would quite literally remove her main way of hurting me and Vermilion. Hopefully.

For now though, I'd just try to relax, and take what enjoyment I could out of slowly dissecting a weird robot thing. For science. And survival. But mostly science.