Every Star in the Sky is an Enemy (Month 2)
[QUOTE=grampagen;5562881]"Did that do it...?"
As if in response, the ground before them began to warp, a concave indent gradually folding into itself. The mechanical surface gradually resolved into a stairwell with an aesthetic matching the interior of the Nevadian craft, geometric steps alight as it descended deep into the core of the Big Ghetti Star itself.[/QUOTE]
Casting one of his glow-globes forward, the Nevadian Captain spied the distance before them, and by the light emending beneath the footfalls of their suits, the simulacrum staircase wound deep as if it had been bored toward the planetoid core. The geometry of the hex-cell structure that comprised he halls seemed to be a facsimile of the Nevadian craft...because that was precisely what they were. Ulysses twisted at this mockery of his guild's technology.
"The machine nabbed my outrunner and did this in an instant and created //something// with a scan of our spacesuits." he said, "We'd better hurry up before it gets some twisted ideas about the men inside them."
Ochazuke's pace continued steadily forward, and he cast a brief look behind his shoulder at his companion.
"Your ship was something The Big Ghetti Star responded to as input. With a mechanical template a created something familiar in form, shaped to a likeness. Take heart, Captain, for the crewmen's ki signatures remain alight."
"Yeah? Who's to say after it pricked your veins it's decided it would treat a body any different from panels and circuits?"
An awkward silence fell between them, as they proceeded down the winding stair until the descent had abruptly ended. Ulysses got the distinct feeling there was something the Earthman wasn't telling him. Puzzling, because though he spoke little, whatever he did say was usually to the point. If the Crane was remiss to explain this, what did that say about the nature of this thing?
[I]Suppose I'll just have to see for myself.[/I]
The illuminatiion globe spun forward and down into the darkness into a great hollow chamber, but was soon redundant amid the yawning air within the chamber. Trails of light streaked along the walls, stretching their flashing array about as particle streams collided and rippled their energies into the walls. Coursing upward to the six-sided geometry lining a hollowed-out dome, the sound of the planetoid's living machinery thrummed. From where they stood, it was as if they stood upon within the superstructure of some great engine, frightful pistons slithered and clashed like a choir of hammers. and energy leaping from siphon to projection coil,
"Captain!"
There perched upon an awning were the Navigators and the outrunner vessel, amid a wild tangle of the filament tube projections. Some injected directly into the hull, while others cast the thin red ray of their mapping device, turning their own scanning technology around on them. Immediately the two flew towards the Nevadians, who appeared more fascinated by observing the machine at work than terrified.
"Son of bitch," Ulysses called out, "we thought you were all done for!"
"So did we! Not sure what happened, but one moment we were prepped for takeoff, then the surface swallowed us whole. We thought it was coming for us but, well, just look at this thing!"
Ulysses gave a guarded glance to the serpentine coils, the HUD of his suit interplaying the relay data from the ship along with the real-time cross reference with what he was observing before his eyes. Not only were the where the Big Ghetti Star's tendrils probed and coed over the canopy, the outrunner craft suffered no damage.
In fact, this had been the best it had looked since it left the shipyard.
"Heat-plating, radome wiring, you name it, everything it's taken a look at it's put back together, good as new," the ensign said, "I'm almost afraid to take it back up, according to the readout we won't have to compensate for the throttle in the jump jets anymore!"
There in the heart of the machine they firsthand witnessed its capabilities for replication and at last understood. It was a kind of adaptive technology, always seeking data to interpret. When it received a stimulus, in an instant it engineered a response; where it detects deficiency, it subsumes with replication and reinforcement.
"It would be nice if we could've got the message in some way." The Captain's concern was as palpable as his sarcasm.
"Heh, well...odd you should mention that. Once it got hold of our transponders, it plugged into our communication frequency..."
"What?!"
Heedless of the maze of cables cocooning the tailfins and broad sides of the survey vessel, Ulysses at once stole toward the cargo ramp and moved to the bridge.
"God dammit, the hell were you thinking," he grumbled, prodding the instruments over the navigation panel and trying in vain to pluck the chromium tethers out of it, "helping a client find their way is one thing, but if our info leaks out of the Federation's hands, Nevada will lose it's edge..."
"What edge would this machine do with coordinates to places it has no idea about?"
"Dammit man, it made an exact copy of our vessel and our tech with a single look. If it gets out to the Armada-!"
It was perhaps a naive sentiment, and yet for Ochazuke the connection briefly shared with the Big Ghetti Star while he was wired into it was a strange extracorporeal experience. The machine began to unravel the innate cipher it had converted into a set of interpretive signals a feedback loop of signification as fast as thought there in the coldness of space. In some manner, he had begun to understand it, and had spoken in silence with it; It was a message that carried itself in every way but in words.
[FONT=Impact]"Edge. Structural. Absent"[/FONT]
No sooner than the when the Captain had cued the console, the signal hail carried a response. Something spoke back through the onboard comms, the words in a strange melding of his voice, Ulysses, and the crewmen into a tuned average of sampled intonation. The viewscreens shifted from the view outside to a feed internal to the craft, the onboard recorders turning their dozens of mechanical eyes on the crewmen who gawped as they saw themselves broadcast back.
"What are you?" Ulysses started. "Why have you captured our vessel?"
There was a great deal of trepidation when the Nevadians' technology, used to analyze how the inner workings of the Big Ghetti Star took shape, had immediately been assimilated, subsumed, and turned against them, and this did little to dissuade this feeling. Yet it had granted the machine world, in a sense, the ability to see them for what they were, and on the viewscreen at the front of the cockpit, their voices and images echoed back to them.
[FONT=Impact]"What. Function? The function is to understand."[/FONT]
Ulysses exchanged a look with Ochazuke, who shrugged as if the matter by now was entirely obvious.
"Understand? For what reason?"
Once dormant, the Star of Steel had come alive the moment it had encountered them, and their presence seemed to be the catalyst for its activation.
[FONT=Impact]"To beget replication."[/FONT]
Though it had assumed their exterior shape in common, the moment it had reached out to them revealed this was no simple mimesis. It was, in a manner, a conscious response of boundless curiosity. Ulysses stared straight into the camera, once so familiar, that now leered out upon him.
"Then why did you take the crew?"
[FONT=Impact]"Biological energy. Suit for bio-mechanical process. Analysis: Flesh. Blood. Synapse. Reflex. That is the nature of subject. Will it not be unraveled?"[/FONT]
"Why ever would you want to do that?"
[FONT=Impact]"To understand subject. What are you?"[/FONT]
With a sigh, Ochazuke folded his arms as he interjected.
"You have said it yourself. Flesh given over to sensory impressions. By this quantitative measure your analysis could be considered complete."
[FONT=Impact]"Flesh-matter and synapse-signal. Analysis remains incomplete. Why?"[/FONT]
"We have here, a unique sort of thinking machine, Captain. Unlike the machines it can create from geometry, it knows there is more than fixed quantities to something living."
[FONT=Impact]"It is my purpose to understand. What are you?"[/FONT]
"Who are you," Ochazuke corrected. "I am a man from Earth, My companions are are Nevadians."
[FONT=Impact]Earth?[/FONT] Following the viewfinder of the ship, the Big Ghetti Star's eye within the Nevadian outrunner fixed itself upon Evangeline's Control Halo held in his suit. It remembered the resonant signal, but immediately the tethers and siphons loosed from the Outrunner. Except for the means of the machine to speak, it had desisted. [FONT=Impact]Homeworld of the Controller. It has been 2629800 hours since we have crossed one another.[/FONT]
"Sounds like it knows about other worlds," Ulysses grumbled.
The Big Ghetti Star presented before them a great crisis. Suppose they left it on its own or had somebody else stumbled upon it, it would wander to aimlessly consume. Suppose they had fired upon it, as something had hewn that gash in its surface how many ages ago?
The potential of this moment, this momentary deference, suddenly placed a great deal of power into Ochazuke's hand.
[FONT=Impact]"Controller-Proxy, query. What is my purpose?"
[/FONT]
"It is as you have said. To observe and to create."
Oh to consider the endless range of the possibilities. Raising the Forger's hammer, held aloft with the [B]spark of creation[/B], Ochazuke struck it into the surface of the Big Ghetti Star.
"For now, we will lead you back to Earth, for we have much work to do."
Ilargi Training II, Part I
[B][CENTER]Month 8
[/CENTER][/B]
It was their second year-long stint on Ilargi. Unlike before, where they focused fully on theory-crafting and honing their existing techniques, the trio of Saiyans had a more focused goal in mind. Sarada relayed to Parsley what she and Zaofan talked about a month earlier about Fusion. It required both participants to be synchronized in every way possible. Even their power levels had to be even.
It would be difficult. While it wasn’t necessary for the heat of battle, keeping perfectly even - or as close to even as possible - required their senses to be tuned to the other at all times. Due to years of training, Sarada and Parsley were already used to keeping their senses on each other during battle, so that wouldn’t be an issue. What would was the very goal itself.
Sarada and Parsley were, as many had probably determined by that point - total the antithesis of each other. Sarada was more accustomed to amping up her power, while Parsley often opted to keep a level bearing until she had a proper feel for the situation. Having to keep themselves even meant that either Sarada would have to exercise patience or Parsley would have to be more expedient in her analysis.
“That’s dumb,” Avoca said frankly. “I mean, if you two plan on fusing, then it doesn’t matter who does what prior to that. Just even up right before.”
“Well, that makes sense,” Parsley murmured.
Avoca grinned and tapped her on the nose. “See? There you go overthinking things again. Now, I have an idea to make this work.” Suddenly, she palmed Parsley’s modest chest. When she predictably recoiled out of embarrassment, she snickered.
“Ugh! What does groping me have to...” It was then that she felt her power starting to drop. “Oh. I see.”
“Yeah. You won’t drop that far, but you’ll be losing power constantly, meaning Sarada will have to steadily match yours. Lowering your power to match someone weaker is easier than raising it to match someone stronger, especially since you two are about even.”
Sarada nodded and sat down on the ground. Parsley’s power was dropping constantly, so she had to concentrate in order to keep their powers even. The lower it dipped, the harder it was because it felt unnatural. “This is harder than I thought,” she groused.
“Eh. Don’t have to get it down in one day.”
And so they continued. Days turned into weeks, consumed purely by the power training. Avoca would sap either sister so that the other could work on matching. As time went on, it back an easier exercise. Becoming attuned with one’s own ki was one of the very first lessons a child learned when their training began at home. Becoming attuned with [I]someone else’s[/I] ki was what set a pair of warriors apart from the rest.
The next task they started three months into their training proved to be much more difficult.
“Alright, so human guy said that you have to be synchronized right?” Avoca asked. “How deep is that supposed to go?”
To that, Parsley and Sarada could only shrug. “In every aspect,” the latter answered.
“Alright. Stand side by side.” As they did so, Avoca continued. “You got keeping your powers down pretty well. Now, do that while performing the Saiyan-Do kata.”
“...that’s it?”
“Buuuut, you have to perform it at the same time. And if you mess up once, you have to start over.”
“What?!”
“That would require us to perfectly mirror each other’s movements,” Parsley commented. “That isn’t possible, right?”
Avoca shrugged remorselessly. “Alright, let’s get started. Oh, and every time you mess up, you start over [I]and[/I] I blast you.” To prove she was serious before either sister could think of a complaint, she powered up and charged a ki blast in her hand. Its power wasn’t considerable by any means, but they already knew that it would be like getting whipped with a tree branch. Eventually, it was going to start hurting.
“Tch.”
The Saiyan-Do kata was one of the simplest warm-ups children learned during their formal training. It was impressed on them right from the first day, and drilled into them until they could perform it purely off muscle memory. However, there were little idiosyncrasies with each person that made their rendition of the kata slightly different from someone else’s. Sarada was naturally more aggressive, so her variation was sharper and more pronounced. Parsley, on the other hand, was more reserved, so hers was more deliberate and fluid. Mirroring each other’s movements when those movements were at opposite ends of the spectrum meant having to find some kind of median.
[I]I foresee a lot of pain in the future,[/I] Parsley thought to herself. One glance at her wife showed that she knew that. She sighed heavily and moved to stand beside Sarada.
They started, and immediately, the differences in their most basic philosophies were abundantly clear. Sarada’s motions were much faster and punctuated by an aggressive grunt. Parsley’s were more fluid and deliberate, as if she using the motions as a calming mechanism as opposed to amp herself up for an impending battle.
Predictably, that led to Sarada running through her kata far faster. It also led to them both being blasted in the stomach.
Avoca cackled with glee. “Try again, ladies.”
Sarada grunted and rubbed her stomach as she rose to her feet. “Parsley, stop going so slow!”
“Me? Try slowing down for once.”
“Nonsense! The kata is what gets me amped up for training. How am I supposed to go hard if I perform it like a decrepit old geezer like you?” Sarada countered.
“Um, that’s not the point,” Avoca interjected.
Sarada frowned and glanced at her.
“It’s all about synching your movements. There is no battle, so there’s no point in amping up. Try again.”
Two divergent personalities and philosophies were hard to reconcile in unison. For every movement that was performed at once, five more came at different intervals. Those times were punished by Avoca without remorse. She was also unrelenting in her criticism. She took an almost euphoric glee in picking Sarada and Parsley’s failures apart.
[I]Between this and her constantly blasting us, I’m starting to think we shouldn’t have brought her,[/I] Sarada thought to herself. It was all getting frustrating. As the days ticked by, she found herself growing annoyed that Parsley insisted on maintaining her pace and expected Sarada to slow herself down a considerable amount to match her.
After a week, they both had large black bruises across their bodies. Despite being more powerful than her, constantly getting hit by a Super Saiyan while in base form hurt considerably. “Alright, look,” Sarada grunted after another day of failure. “You can’t expect me to compromise 100%. It’s not fair to expect me to completely alter [I]my[/I] mindset while you get to keep yours,” she said to Parsley. She pointed a stern finger at her and glowered. “We’re supposed to be doing this together. This was your idea, after all!”
“If I go any faster, I'll get the kata wrong and mess [I]you[/I] up,” Parsley argued.
That was a good point. “Tch. Who cares? We have only nine months to get this down to they can teach us this Fusion thing next time we’re on Earth. If there’s a time to get things wrong and mess up, it’s now. Right?”
Judging by the silence she received, Sarada made just as valid a point. “At least try and meet me halfway,” she added.
“Alright, fine.”
With that, they continued. Parsley’s pace was noticeably more rushed to at least give Sarada a more reasonable middle ground to try and reach. That rushed paced led to her being sloppier, which meant more mistakes. She was right; it did mess Sarada up, which led to them both getting blasted over and over again.
Compromise meant giving as much as she took and meeting as close to the middle as possible. For two completely different people to move at the same rate of speed, with the same thoughts - or close to it - it required that both of them deal with a fair amount of uncomfortableness. And Sarada felt uncomfortable, for sure. She was used to taking things slow; but performing a series of motions she had recorded in her muscle memory in a completely different way than she had for the over fifteen years was a struggle. It required her active mind to fight against her subconscious body and tug it in a direction it didn’t want to go into. She was sure Parsley was going through the same struggle.
“Try again,” Avoca said.
Hours turned to days and they were no closer to performing the kata as one than they were when they started.
“Try again.”
Days turned to weeks. Progress was slow and torturous. Sarada was finally feeling more at ease about performing the kata at a slower pace than her body was used to. Parsley claimed she felt the same, and the fewer mistakes she made while going faster was evidence.
“Try again.”
Weeks shifted into months. Over the last few days, Avoca had been less and less involved. The occasional blast there and there, but overall, she resigned herself to the role of simple spectator. Sarada and Parsley finally had it down. From what she could tell, their motions were completely in-sync. They performed the Saiyan-Do kata forwards and backwards in unison, without any mistakes or hang-ups.
“Alright! We did it!” Sarada cheered as she and her sister high-fived. “At this rate, we’ll be fused up in no time!”