Eternal Galaxy: Phoenix - Intermission

[S121]

Hunteri Stronghold – Sedes Imperii (Palace)

As Aion continued to speak with Mimi, John remained almost entirely silent, trying to piece together all he could remember about Aion, but very little came up. Cortana also had little success in fully remembering Aion. Even after combing through her database, all she could find were small fragments with very little or no context.

Finally, after spending a few seconds remaining silent, John thought that it would be best to break the rather unproductive silence.

"We should get back to the task at hand. We need to find a shortcut into the labs, and Cortana may have found a way to both get there, and reroute some of the power to raising the city. The only problem is this door.", John said to everyone in the room while pointing at the council chamber doors with his thumb, hoping that they could get moving as soon as possible.





CY-001 - Nevaaras

As Ethan followed Miranda and Mokou to the Central Tower, he couldn't help but notice Mokou's reaction to the colony's technology, her only comment being "cooooool" as she quickly glanced at everything and absorbed all she could observe. Her reaction caused Ethan to look over to her grin a little as she commented that she loved the sights CY-001 had to offer.

"I take it you like what you see?", Ethan asked Mokou, with a grin across his face and a single raised brow.





Hallman's Office | The Expense

Emil simply looked over to Hallman with a rather unamused look on his face, but rather than grace his employer with a response, Emil thought it would be best to focus his attention on the strange box. This time, Emil pushed and pulled at the door much harder than before, with enough force to push a tank.

[WriggleRid3r]

CY-001 - Nevaaras

---

"Fascinated." Mokou corrected Ethan's assumptions, not taking an eye off things and ultimately running into a wall. "Ow. Gotta watch where I'm going."

Mokou quickly caught up, as her walking pace was slower because of her fascinated eyes wandering away from where she was going. "But yeah, this place is amazing." Mokou beamed as if she was a kid at a candy store. "Look at all these... these... STUFF. I don't know what half of them are called, but I must say, technology is awesome. I especially like those jump pad things: they look fun."

[Aria of Forbidden Magic]

Prosperity - Sungrey
BGM: Umineko: When They Cry - Steady Pace
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yXHatTQBT6A

---

A startled look rose to Terra's face. "A-about myself? Y-you want to know about me? Ok then..." She wasn't quite ready for that question. She hadn't met many people who asked her that so directly. Most of the time it seemed like this kind of stuff came up later on. Regardless, she wouldn't let that stop her. I hope I don't just prattle on and on, Terra thought.

"Well, uh... where to begin... Well, I'm a magician! That's something about myself!" Terra nodded and put her index finger up as if that had been some grand idea. "I have lots of grimoires at home and I just love studying them! Oh, and also, I'm sixteen years old, in case you were wondering." Terra paused again. "Um... hmm... well... what kind of thing did you want to know about me? Specifically?"

[Kilelicus]

Prosperity | Sungrey

---

Phenom shrugged. "Anything I suppose. History you're willing to reveal? Morals? Beliefs? Knowing ones comrades leads to better communication on the battlefield, and it may just help us all survive tomorrow."

[Koishi]

Nevaaras

---

"Compared to what i'm familiar with, it's fairly low-tech." SiMo chimed into the conversation, coming up alongside the three. "Reminds me of the city of Brightholme from the planet from where I originate. I do hope it isn't as... seedy as there, however."

[Tewi_Inaba]

Hallman's Office | The Expense

Lycoris watched from the far corner of her master's office, watching her mentor struggle to open the seemingly impenetrable box. She wanted to help him but having already given it her all the cat girl didn't know how she could possibly be any use to the man. She sat there and watched helplessly at Emil's struggle, her ears folding down when she heard the mocking comments from one of them men to the other. She didn't like it whenever either her master or her mentor were unhappy, and this was one of the awful moments when it seemed both of them were frustrated. At least she wasn't the cause of the frustration. Not wanting to be a bother, Lycoris went back to eating her fishies and pretended she was somewhere else.

[Aria of Forbidden Magic]

Prosperity - Sungrey
BGM: Umineko: When They Cry - Steady Pace
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yXHatTQBT6A

---

"Umm..." It doesn't really feel like he's specified anything, Terra thought. It was possible that he thought she was trying to be polite by tailoring the topic to be more interesting to him. He might not have realized that she really didn't quite know where to start.

A few seconds passed as Terra decided what to talk about. She looked up at him (but not in his eyes) and let the words fall out as she thought. "Ok, how's this? I'm a runaway. My parents have always hated magic, and so to them, a daughter who wanted little more than to be a magician wasn't ideal. Our relationship was... strained. Things didn't go well between us..." While her voice had sounded firmer at the beginning of the phrase, it began to drop here. Terra's entire demeanor sagged as she quietly reflected on her time living under her parents' roof.

With a stutter, Terra continued speaking again, her voice returning to the tone she had exercised earlier, a bluntness that told her story as best it could. "A-anyway, when their... unfortunate parenting methods failed to work on me, it just made me feel worse and worse until I left them. For a while I wandered all alone, but they managed to find me again. Thankfully, because some of their... troublesome actions were brought to attention, and because-" Terra stopped herself. She was about to say "because my parents are totally loaded," but decided to scale it back. "Because they had enough money to support me from afar, I got to live alone. So, for the past five or six years, I've been living alone, studying magic."

Terra looked down upon finishing her story. She hoped he hadn't gotten bored or... whatever negative emotions he might have felt. She was sure in his line of work he'd seen far worse than a little parental abuse. As it always did when she talked about her past, a sense of guilt began to overwhelm her. Other people had real problems. Terra had money, magic, things many people wanted. What did she have to complain about?

[Kilelicus]

Prosperity | Sungrey
BGM: Legend of Dragoon OST - Reminiscence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu8AhRht6Nc

---

Phenom listened to Terra's story intently. To any other kind of soldiers, it might have sounded like she was simply complaining, but as far as an Angel was concerned, everyone had their limits. This appeared to be Terra's limit of emotional distress. In comparison, Phenom was lucky. His parents accepted him for who he was. He glanced over at her. "I see.. It must have been hard for you... I was lucky. Provided I've seen my share of death but... that comes with being a soldier. But my father and mother accepted me, I had a safe place to live... You're awfully shy around strangers, too. Am I right to assume friendship was a rare commodity for you?"

A thought occurred to Phenom. He didn't know what loneliness really was. He glanced at his hands. He felt weak almost permanently after losing so many close to him, but he had never known true loneliness. At least not that he was aware of. He had always been surrounded by an extended family, as far as the existence of Heaven was concerned. Everyone had their own quirks, and everyone was accepting there. "There's one word that you never used in addressing your relatives... Family. You feel you didn't have a family? You must have been terribly lonely. I'm sorry. But that knowledge makes me think... Why would you want to go back to a place fettered with such sadness?"

[Aria of Forbidden Magic]

Prosperity - Sungrey
BGM: Umineko: When They Cry - Steady Pace
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yXHatTQBT6A

---

Terra widened her eyes and shook her head. "I-it's not like I don't have friends! There are other kids my age I like to be with!" Her eyes fell once again. "It's just... I'm not entirely sure they feel the same way... I-I mean... I don't know how they feel about me. I hope for people to like me, but I'm never sure they actually do..." The young girl suddenly looked truly small, as though she was deflating, like a perky, fun pool float after the air had all been pushed out.

Her speech stopped there for Phenom, but in her mind, she continued lamenting. They don't like to tell me a lot about themselves. Everyone knows friends have fun together, and I do have fun with them, but don't friends help each other too? People sometimes have problems, and then their friends are the people who help them out. But... mine don't tell me about theirs, so I can't help them, and whenever I try to talk about my own they don't seem to care. So I have money, and maybe that made me a bit soft. Who cares? I have my own issues too.

But then I wonder if they're right. What if they are? What if my problems aren't actually that bad, and what if because I complain about them they just make me seem even worse? Then they'll start to hate me, even if I don't already annoy them, which I'm almost certain I do. I can't do it! I can't tell them anything that's making me feel bad, not even if it eats at me every day and every night! I can't ever let them see anything... Terra didn't move. She had been holding onto those feelings for years, clutching them tightly where no one could see them, judge them, ridicule them. The world knew her as a cheerful, aspiring magician and writer with no problems of her own. The girl underneath all of that, however, began to be crushed under the weight of her mask. She had been hiding in the depths of her heart to escape the world's cruel judgement, but simultaneously longed for someone to see her truly broken self. What she was was a pile of shards masquerading as a complete piece, but waiting for someone to pick up her pieces and remake her into something beautiful.

[Kilelicus]

Prosperity | Sungrey
BGM: Legend of Dragoon OST - Reminiscence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu8AhRht6Nc

---

Phenom glanced at Terra. Her facade of contentedness didn't fool him one bit, but he decided not to pry at her feelings. "If you don't want to tell me any more, I won't pry." Phenom shrugged and took the crystal that he had been given earlier out of his cloak pocket. He studied it for a few moments, prodding it and such. It seemed somewhat... familiar, but he couldn't put his finger on where exactly he thought he had seen the substance before

[Cucoo5]

Palace - Sedes Imperii

"Right." Aion looked over to Achlys. "After you, ad'ita." A shake of the head was her response. "Oh right, conserving Gaia'va. Ah..." He looked about for the door's maintenance panel. "Condor 2A, if you would?" He nodded to it and the man immediately pulled out a small welding torch and quickly cut away the protective casing exposing the power conduits. A quick snip of one revealed the crystalline core of the cable leading to the lock. He then took off the glove of his left hand and pressed a knife blade into the exposed skin until it drew blood. The red liquid dripped onto the corlaviri cable and it seemed to seep into it. A few more drops caused a loud thunk to emanate from the lock, signaling that it had been released. “When there’s not a lot of Gaia Energy, use Aura energy.” Aion turned to the others. “I’ll take group one and three and head for the transport to retrieve Nemesis’s body. Achlys, take the rest and head for the labs.

Achlys smiled ruefully. “I’ll make sure nobody blows up anything we’ll miss later.”

“I’ll see you all in ten minutes. Hopefully we’ll have our favorite androids up and running properly for the flight out.”

Prosperity
"If you were here as long as I think you have been, then you should be familiar with Corlaviri." The Umbra woman from earlier appeared sitting on a box that was across from Phenom and Terra. "And no, I'm not telepathic. I can just sense what someone is feeling to a degree when they are in contact with it."

[Kilelicus]

Prosperity | Sungrey

---

Phenom's eyebrows raised as he heard the Umbra speak from out of the darkness so suddenly. He was originally just trying to figure out if the crystal actually worked, but this was a good enough result. "Oh... so that's how it works. Well, long as you're here, are you and your unit ready for the morning? If I know arrogance, he'll be here in a few hours..."

[Cucoo5]

Prosperity

A wry smile crept onto the Umbra's face. "If you're asking about the Hunteri, they were ready to hunt for the Null as soon as they left yesterday. They're camped outside, a great sense of impatience among them. The younger of them don't understand that normal beings need hours of sleep." She glanced at Terra as if studying her. "May I ask why this ad'ita is still here?"

[Kilelicus]

Prosperity | Sungrey

---

"Right... Well they can wait a few hours more. I've no idea where our Null has gone, and my searching for him would be a waste of time and energy. He will come here. That is a promise. As for Terra... the girl knows how to fight. She may lack a warriors heart, but what she lacks in unrepentant murder, she makes up for in knowledge. Knowledge of power that may yet prove useful even against your Nihiliods."

Phenom stared, stonefaced, at the Umbra for a few moments before speaking again. "Beyond that, she'll be safe with my compatriots." he said, nodding at the unconscious Amanda and Gaspard, "The two of them alone cannot take on an entire army. They lack my strength and speed. But couple Gaspard's foresight with Amanda's teleportation and combat knowledge and Terra's own abilities, and they may yet survive. I will be busy with our Null friend if he takes my form. That is the worst-case scenario."

[Aria of Forbidden Magic]

Prosperity - Sungrey
BGM: Umineko: When They Cry - Steady Pace
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yXHatTQBT6A

---

Terra was startled by the appearance of that - Terra couldn't remember the name they had used - that woman who didn't seem to be human from earlier. Somewhere within, however, Terra was happy for the break in conversation. Even if Phenom said he wouldn't pry, now that this woman had shown up, he certainly wouldn't. Good thing, too. Terra didn't want to go into her past much more than she already had. Some details especially she wanted to keep under wraps.

When that woman asked what Terra was still doing there, Terra recoiled slightly. She didn't sound like she meant for it to be an insult and was probably only curious, but Terra's pride still suffered a wound. But what did "ad'ita" even mean?

After hearing Phenom's most recent words, Terra's gaze sharpened. She was already getting into a warrior mindset. When in battle, Terra would become much more focused and determined than she seemed in normal interactions. Phenom said that Terra didn't have the heart of a warrior, but that wasn't quite true. She just didn't kill people. There weren't many who could slice and stab another human being without so much as scratching them.

Terra finally spoke up then. She had remained silent while Phenom had talked to the other army, but since it was just the three of them talking now, she felt as though her contribution wouldn't be irrelevant. "This thing, this... Demonarc Null, was it? Do either of you think it's possible it's taken another person's form? Last we saw it it took mine, but what if it's impersonating somebody else now? We should be wary, right?" Terra brought this up only for their sake, not her own. Another thing they didn't know was that Terra had an ability that wouldn't allow the Null to beat her with that kind of trick. Of course, Terra didn't plan on telling them. If he did try to trick them that way, she'd have to come up with some excuse for how she could tell.