Future Imperfect (Closed)

[Lucius]

Future Imperfect

Closed to Alyssa.

[Lucius]

“A gun mage?” Lucius’s eyebrow raised.

The barkeep nodded solemnly. He continued to polish a glass for a few moments before he set it upside down on a shelf beneath the counter.

“Bullshit.”

“Call it what you will, but I know what I saw.”

From a dwarf, this was as much testament to the truth as you could get. Lucius watched the haggard proprietor polish several more glasses. He shuffled nervously on his stool. He sat for so long he was beginning to forget where wood ended and buttocks began.

“Let’s say that it’s true…,” he said hesitantly. “Let’s just…assume for a moment.” The dwarf rolled his eyes. Lucius continued as he leant across for his drink. “How might I go about finding her?”

It was a simple enough question. Getting a simple answer from Axon Sorghum, however, was never so easy. Lucius had only lived in Alerar two months and the bane of his life was the overly stubborn nature of his host. Despite the generous tips Lucius gave, the dwarf never gave more than was required of an hotelier in the capital.

“I would hazard to say listen for gunshots,” was all he offered.

Lucius sighed. He ran his right index finger around the rim of tankard. It was a battered vessel well used and increasingly to be found in the spy’s hands. He had become attached it to the point of considering giving it a name.

“I was really hoping you wouldn’t say that…” He drained the beer dry. It was a weak but cheap and cheerful mash. “Caus’ now I have to ask for help.” His voice, already a foreign accent in the dark elf heartland increased just enough in pitch to give Axon pause for thought.

“Keep. It. Down,” he growled. His hirsute nostrils flared.

“Or you’ll what?” Lucius challenged. His eyes sparkled with youthful brogue, but the moment passed quickly. The blunderbuss that had appeared on the counter put a line under his aggressive stance and he moved very quickly on.

“I’ll help, but shut up.” The dwarf’s offer felt more like a threat. Bullets did that to words.

Lucius nodded appreciatively, as though given a favour. He set the tankard down in front of the barrel, as though it might allay the instant death from the shot, and folded his arms across his chest.

“I’m all ears,” he said much softer.

Axon did away with the firearm and leant forwards. From his wooden box, the dwarf got just enough advantage to lean in to Lucius’ ear and whisper. His breath smelt like tobacco and oil; the discerning Alerar’s perfume.

“She’s a homunculus.”

Administrate training prevented Lucius from swearing again, and louder than before. He leant back, cursed silently, and nodded his thanks. He deposited an extra silver coin on the counter atop the payment for his beer, and slipped gingerly from the stool.

“That’s guidance enough,” he affirmed as he turned to walk away. The grumbling dwarf went back to his duties and forgot the matter. There was resentment in every sound, and perhaps curiosity as to why he had given away so much to a stranger.

Lucius walked between the hushed tables, trainers padding the floorboards and thighs tingling as blood began to flow properly about his tired body once again. He adjusted his cap as he reached the door, and gave the inn one last glance. It was a galley, placed between workshop and market. It served the workers of this district well over the years. So close to his hovel called home, it had become a sanctuary soon enough.

“See you anon,” he whispered, uncertain as to where a meeting of technology and magic was going to lead him.

Stepping out into Ettermire’s cold delightful night, Lucius did up his collar, connected to the A.R.I.A’s data-link, and tethered his unconscious mind to the small freighter high in orbit over the elven continent. From within its unfathomably large databanks, he dredged up anything he could on gun mages and homunculi. He searched for any hints as to why the wormhole that threatened his home timeline began right here in Alerar.

[Alyssa Snow]

"Sorry Miss, I can't say I know what material this is crafted of. The cut is definitely unique and exceptionally precise. Even if I could get my hands on whatever crystal this is and had the tools to cut it, I don't know if I could shape it with that precision."

The elven artificer rotated the gem under a jewel smith's magnifier. He flipped between lenses, several words mumbled under his breath each time. Alyssa, the owner of the item in question, sat across from his mahogany desk in a rather ornate chair. Though the news forced her to sigh, a part of her remained amused by the increasing and decreasing of his iris within the lenses.

"Do you at least have any assumptions?" Alyssa inquired. The tone sounded desperate.

The artificer took a deep breath and broke away from the multi-lens apparatus. He propped his elbow against the desk and extended the gem to her. She plucked it from his aged fingers, her eyes begging for something - anything. The elf exhaled in defeat against her. He adjusted his spectacles against the withered bridge of his nose.

"The closest I've seen in my near millennia would be a Kiramaini from the country of Fallien." Alyssa quirked a brow as she placed the crystal back into a contraption with six others. "I have only seen two out of the endless numbers of gems this desk has had atop it."

"A Kiramaini?" The blonde mage gunner repeated. She shifted her crossed legs over one another and shuffled to the edge of her seat. The elder elf cracked a faint smile at her youthful intrigue.

"Yes, it is a type of glass. The ones I saw were no larger than-" He held out two fingers about an inch apart. "-and they possessed a similar affinity towards magic. Yours however is much larger, more dense and from what I could sense, has a much larger affinity for energy." He pointed towards the array of crystals she finished placing back in her hip pouch. "I tried to place a temporary enchantment on it while appraising it, but the enchantment fizzled out far too soon."

Alyssa nodded. "I'm know what you're talking about. I don't know how I do it, but if I concentrate hard enough, I can...charge it? The charge won't hold until it's...full?" She struggled to explain the sensation for something she performed as though second nature.

"Full you say? Like filling a glass?"

"Yeah, just like that. When it can't take any more, something just 'clicks'. After that, it's fine. They can hold energy for days, weeks, months even."

The elf steepled his pale, slender fingers and narrowed his eyes in contemplation. He examined her, occasionally scrunching his face in strange expressions. Silence fell on the jewelery shop. After a moment, the young mage gunner pursed her lips, bit them a little, then puffed her cheeks. Her lips parted.

Pop!

"Tell you what," the artificer commented. He pushed off his desk and stood. "I have something I want you to have." Alyssa quirked a brow and watched the elder navigate to the shelves of dusty tomes behind him. His finger traced their spines, each one a different color, thickness, and texture. He let out a grunt of affirmation when his finger hooked around the one he desired. He pulled it from the rest.

"A peasant boy came in here a few years back and gave me this." He sat back down and placed the book in front of her. The pages were browned near the edges and an earthen yellow every where else. Each page was loosely bound to one another and shoddily bound in leather chord. They looked more to her like a scholar's notes than a book.

"What is it?"

"I've looked through the pages. Most of it is in the exiled elven tongue. It talks about magical conductivity in various stones, gems, and crystals. Some of the later pages are numbers, lines, and strange symbols. I'm afraid even after my many years on this earth, I haven't the knowledge to decipher it."

He reached over and flipped the pages, stopping near the end and firmly pressing a wrinkled digit into the parchment. Just below it was an image.

"This," he continued. "reminded me of your crystals."

Alyssa leaned in to take a closer look. In the center of the page, surrounded by numbers mixed with strange symbols, was sketched the rough outline matching the shape of her crystals. Faint lines crissed and crossed over one another just like the cut the artificer commented on. A drawing of a rock wasn't the best lead, but it was something.

"Do you know where he got it?" The mage gunner pulled it from his desk and began browsing the pages.

"He wouldn't say. Only that he found it near the base of the Mountains of Dawn to the west. He brought it to me thinking he could sell it for a few sovereigns. He was no older than you. I gave him a few pieces of Raiaeran gold and sent him on his way."

Alyssa looked up in shock. "A few?! Raiaeran coin is easily worth a hundred of the common sovereign!"

The artificer smiled and nodded. Alyssa looked at the book and back to him.

"Are you sure I can just have this?" she asked, concerned.

"Child, I've lived several of your lifetimes and seen several generations come and go. I'm old, and I don't have the bones to carry me on adventures anymore. Soon, I won't even be able to do this anymore." He gestured to the shop surrounding them. "I don't have children, and that bastard Xem'Zund murdered my family." Alyssa watched his eyes flicker with the memory of times long past and futures soon setting on the horizon. Her heart ached for him. "The least I can do with my final years is give the new generation hope and direction. Take the book. Go find the answers you seek."

"Atir..."

"Just go. I'm fine. A cup of tea and I'll be right as rain."

Alyssa didn't believe him, but she knew when her welcome was overstayed. She pulled the tome close to her chest as she stood.

"Thank you, Atir." She gave the elder a concerned smile. Without words, he shooed her with a few flicks of his wrist.

Alyssa took a deep breath, turned about, and left the shop into the dark, cloudy skies of Beinost. Alyssa came to the dock city to seek out traders who may be versed in geology. Atir's name came up several times as being the one man who could appraise any gem, stone, or rock. Now, even he couldn't help her. She clutched the tome and looked towards the threatening sky.

"Looks like rain," she muttered to herself with no one nearby to agree. The streets were barren, a common stance for the cursed port city. She took one final glass through the window of Atir's shop to see the elf bury his face in his hands. She frowned.

Alyssa inhaled the salty, humid air and ventured down the desolate streets of the merchant quarters. The girl began her trek back towards the local inn where she could escape the impending rain, grab a hot meal, and partake in a drink for the suffering artificer. Today was turning out to be a dreadfully dreary day of disappointment.

[Lucius]

Staring out at a wide, silver sea, Lucius stole his own thoughts through indecision. The crack in time was visible now, even without the aid of instruments and the A.R.I.A. It was a feint slither of light, rippling and wavering above a wide, poisoned lake. Alerar was beautiful once, but war stole that from the elves and now time was threatening to steal Alerar from itself.

“Shit…,” was all he could muster after a long, awkward, contemplative silence.

Three days prior all roads lead hear, but those roads did not lead to a gun mage. The only gun in sight was the barrel aimed at his forehead if he failed to divine the source of two timeline’s mutual destruction. He pursed his lips. He clenched his fists. He tensed muscles in his stomach surrounding cybernetic implants.

“Activate holographic interface.”

A wide blue circle appeared in front of Lucius. It formed a map of a planet, surrounded by smaller rotating circles and writing in a series of fluctuating scientific script. Pulses of light flickered outwards, fading into faint flecks of electrified light. The agent felt his heartbeat heavier in his chest as circuitry and capillaries worked together to draw power from his own body.

“Show me the conduit.”

A ship appeared in the circle, a small dot marked by an Administrate code over Alerar’s landmass. Lucius stared at it intently, and when satisfied the link was secure he conjured a second circle with a rotation of his right hand. There, a galactic map of the Alerar sector from his time appeared.

“Chronicle recent changes in the temporal rift and locate the point of origin.”

The A.R.I.A device responded with a shrill beep. The data bot tucked away next to the power pack on Lucius’ belt came to life. It shuddered, sprouted legs, and climbed up his back like a pet spider. Its singular ocular lens stared at the map and it too let out a shrill beep.

“Hello Jensen,” the agent said with a fond memory of friends back home. “What do you see?”

Lucius looked to his ‘friend’, and then to the maps. The lens of the bot projected a laser light, which ripped through the hologram and left a faint tracer in its wake as it scanned mountain ranges, airship ports, and asteroid belts. Unlike the man, Lucius named his machine over, Jensen electronic took seconds to work it out. Another beep followed by a series of beeps sent a message to the A.R.I.A, which in turn sent translated to Lucius earpiece.

“Oh,” he mumbled. “So not in Alerar.”

This proved a source of surprise. All signs pointed to the disaster, which destroyed Althanas and sent its people out into space being in Alerar. Though now was not the century, the wormhole was changing things. He guessed anything was possible with time in flux. He cocked his shoulder, slipped the gun from his back, and began to load the barrel and charge the firing mechanism.

“Back to bed, you,” he clucked at the bot. It climbed down his back with a disgruntled chitter and clicked back onto his belt.

“Administrate Agent 492, message incoming.”

A cold wind rolled down the incline to the east, kicking the reeds and rushes into a dance. It sounded like ocean waves, but Lucius realised the shore of the lake to the north was lapsing as the full moon overhead waxed and waned in strength near the surface of the world. He sighed.

“Put it through.” He tensed. It had to be from Sei.

“Permission to use Warp Jump granted. Authorisation 3-x-456.”

Lucius blinked.

“What the?” He had not asked for permission yet. “That means…,” he trailed off. He bit his lip. He tensed even more. “Time is running out.”

He tapped the hologram with a series of commands, turned the map to angle his trajectory, and stepped back fifty feet to take aim. The barrel warmed. The wind died. The abyss night sky lightened, as though day came too swift, and then he pulled the trigger. With a sense of urgency, the energy bolt cracked the hologram, tore open the energy wake, and opened a spherical portal that sucked all life from a hundred feet, Lucius included, swiftly inwards. A sucking nose. A sudden loss. Then nothing. The sphere disappeared, and the Administrate Agent hot on the heels towards the rough current whereabouts of the girl with the answers. The woman who could save them all.

…or kill everyone, and everything.

The lake lapsed on in silence, the moon overhead shone bright alone.

[Alyssa Snow]

The lonely gunner clicked her black boots against the beaten and worn cobblestones. Above, the clouds rumbled with distant thunder in a prominent display of promised rain. Alyssa looked to the sky with those soft blue eyes. The darkening grey rolled above and peered down upon her and the papers she clung tight to her breast. She resumed her gaze to the distant sign of the inn swaying in the strengthening winds. Her steady pace quickened. The brewing storm chuckled thunderously at her attempts and began to unleash bullets of water down upon all of Beinost. The first caught Alyssa in the nape of her neck. The cold splash sent a chill down her spine and stood her hairs on end. Now, she began to sprint.

"I can't let these get wet!" she thought. The safe haven from the sky's assault tempted her on the growing horizon. Her breathe quickened.

The storm would not relent. It refused to hold back its fury and unleashed the army of raindrops. Platoons upon platoons hissed together as they sailed to the ground. Alyssa's small frame, already riddled with point of impact, hurried at her fastest pace. The clicks of boots to stone became wet and devolved into sloppy slaps. The scattered few civilians which remained cast a concerned eye toward her. Unlike them, Alyssa did not welcome the rain nor embrace it as a normalcy of a port city.

"Damn it, damn it, damn it!" she cursed as edges of the precious tome Atir gifted her darkened with rain.

Light crackled across the sky and exploded with a roar that rattled the young girl's bones. Her chest heaved, her body hunched, and her legs carried her to the approaching inn.

Victory.

She burst through the doors in a manner that turned the heads of the handful of patrons within. Alyssa staggered to a stop to gasp for air. Her clothes dripped into the frayed and damaged floorboards. Each drop lost its individuality against the hiss of the downpour from outdoors.

"Y'alright miss?" the young elven bartender questioned in the common tongue.

She could not speak though her gasping breaths. She nodded instead and showered more rainfall from her clumped strands of platinum blonde. The tender shrugged and the patrons resumed their routine habits.

"Made it."

She peeled the pages from her grip and examined the damage. Luckily, her chest saved the papers from serious water-log and only the edges showed signs of moisture. She let a sigh of relieve escape her. Still winded, Alyssa righted herself and began to head for the stairwell to the left of the bar.

"You have a key, Miss?" the bartender inquired as Alyssa placed a wet boot on the oaken steps. From her bosom, the mage gunner produced a worn brass key. The tender nodded in affirmation and the girl continued up the steps and down the hall. 1, 2, 3, and room 7. At the end of the hallway, Alyssa turned to her room. She shivered as the damp clothes began to take a toll in the cool air. The key clattered against the bronze keyhole until it found its fit. With a turn, the door gave way.

"Home sweet home," she commented to the cozy little room. In the center stood a simple down mattress with two mage-fire sconces on either side of the oaken backboard. At the foot of the bed was a large trunk and currently contained her much needed change of clothes. She skittered to it, latched it open, and exchanged the leather bound tome for a few sheer articles of nightwear. Again, she shivered. Her damp clothes had to go.

The door clicked shut behind her. Lighting flickered through the one open window. Alyssa furrowed her brows in frustration. She desperately wanted to get rid of her clothes, but her concern for prying eyes overpowered the desire. She shuffled to the window between shivers and drew the curtains closed. She rolled her eyes and let out and exasperated sigh.

"Finally!" she exclaimed.

The first to hit the floor was her thigh holsters. Each gun dropped to the ground with a firm thud. Next to find its way around the bedpost was her Akashiman silk top. Then, with a wet flop, both her knee high boots were removed and cast aside. She quaked again from the cold. Her fair skin prickled and hairs stood on end. With a wiggle of her hips, she removed her skirt. Lastly, she removed her wet undergarments. If she were still in Fallien, the cool breeze would have been pleasing. Unfortunately, it chilled her to the core. Alyssa plucked her sheer nightwear from the bed and slipped it over her head.

"Little b-better," she chattered to the empty room.

Hair still sopping wet, the girl removed one of her magnums from its holster on the floor and placed it upon one of the two pillows. Her bare feet pressed against the risen grains of wood toward the series of towels hanging just outside a wash basin. After a few passes of her slender fingers, she twisted the fluffy cotton into a spiral upon her head to sop up the remaining rain from her hair. She paused for a brief moment as she caught a glimpse of her own reflection. Her face formed a frown. The mage gunner turned her back to the mirror, and through the thin sheer gown, a grotesque risen scar stood out as a blemish on her beautiful skin. Her hand rose to graze it and a dull pain radiated from her touch. She sighed, shook her head, and tried to rid the concern for her flaw from her mind.

Finally, she met her gaze with the bed. The frown became a smile. Then, with a childish leap, she bounded into its warm embrace and shimmied under the dry sheets. With a feminine peep, she drew the them over the bridge of her nose and let them work the chill from her bones.

"This is how to spend a rainy day!" she thought as the rain from outside pattered against the window.

"Now, about those papers..." Reluctant to expose her skin to the chill once more, Alyssa forced herself to crawl towards the trunk to reach for the papers. They would provide the perfect reading material as she finished warming up.

[Lucius]

In the corridor outside Alyssa’s room, a portal flickered into life. It scintillated, as if fate foretold its arrival, and arced lightning to torch bracket and doorknob. At first, it tore apart the wall opposite the gun mage’s chamber. Then, as though undoing its own destruction, things stabilised. Wood planks returned to their places, iron nails to their holes. An altogether sun settling and faint scream began to seep out from the silver sphere.

“If this leads to Dheathain…,” a voice whispered, grumbling in the space between silence and shout.

Alyssa’s door received a barrage of earth clod. More of the distant shores of a lake entered the tavern, spat out like seeds from a ripe fruit. The gun mage, pert and engrossed in her novella of science and sorcery, looked up from her desk. She blinked. It was too late for cold callers, and she had told no-one bar the shop keep where she was.

“Who the…?” she mumbled.

She left her pen between the pages of her book to keep her place and went to the door.

“Hello?” she asked.

No answer.

“Wh-”

She pulled the wooden portal open and met with the portal, silver, skein sliver, and dominating the space beyond her sanctuary. A bolt of lightning struck the doorframe and singed the wood. The scream grew louder and Alyssa stepped aside as the portal rippled.

“Fuuccckkkkkk!” Out popped a future man, across the room and into the wall. He dropped onto Allyssa’s bed in a heap.

[Alyssa Snow]

It all happened too fast. There she was, half nude in her sheer evening wear, a man crumpled in her bed, and all manner of chaos in the hallway. She couldn't think. She couldn't speak. She just stood there praying, hoping this was some strange dream from passing out while reading. The portal in the doorway flickered a flash of silver and struck out another bolt at her bare feet. The mage gunner jumped as small embers from the blackened floorboards splashed against her skin. The brief moment of pain confirmed the event as reality. Then, its swirling mass pulsed like a rock dropped in water and imploded out of existence with an otherworldly sound.

Alyssa looked to the open doorway in a daze. Clumps of dirt and sand lay spread just outside her door. She drifted her gaze to the groaning, mumbling mess sprawled out on her bed.

"W-what in the--"

"You alright in here miss?" A rather burly looking fellow peaked his head into her room with an expression of concern. Like a doe looking into carriage lights, she turned to him. The elderly man grew flush in the cheeks and Alyssa traced his eyes to her semi-transparent attire.

"Oh my god!" she shrilled. "Get out! Out with you! OUT!"

Alyssa attempted to shield herself from his gaze in vain while she bolted for the door and slammed it with all her might into his face. A hollow thud followed by several expletives came from the other side.

"I'm fine! Just... just!" She couldn't piece the words together. "Just go away!"

"You'll be paying for this mess!" Alyssa heard muffled through the door. "And you won't be staying another night! This is an Inn, not some fetish house!"

Aggressive footsteps diminished down the hallway, again leaving her in the quiet sanctum of her room. Or not.

"Ugh," groaned the mess of bones in her bed. "Who taught them their velocity calculations...?"

The young blonde spun around in a startle, her eyes widened and breath quickened. She made a mad dash for her other revolver lying next to the bed. She leveled it on the intruder and pulled back the hammer.

"W-Who are you and what--?!" She looked down at her attire, panicked, and ripped the towel from her head to clutch against her chest and torso. "And what do you want?! So help me, if you don't explain yourself I'll--I'll!" She motioned her revolver toward him to make her point.

[Lucius]

Just short of six millennia had failed to educate Lucius on the finer points of explaining oneself. Not one to break the habit of twelve lifetimes, he sputtered his way through four different increasingly unlikely scenarios before he cycled back to the truth.

“Ermm…,” he sighed. “You see, I sort of know you.”

This statement did little to help him out in the creepy stakes. At the very least, she was no longer naked and Lucius restrained his desire to produce his own weapon quite literally from thin air (or a temporal safe, which she would never understand the science behind).

“What the hell do you mean?”

Looking around the chamber, the agent calculated routes of escape just in case his less than athletic rhetoric served to further his galaxy spanning agenda. With a coy smile, he turned his attention to the girl-who-could-end-it, and gave it his all.

“I am Lucius, I have been searching for a gun mage for…,” he made a mock gesture of mental arithmetic, “several years.” The very second he finished saying it he completely wished he had not.

“Err.” Alyssa tightened the towel around herself, a metaphorical shield. “O…kay.”

Floorboards creaked. Windows rattled. Out in the encroaching darkness of night, lies thickened the air with slick reasoning and half-veiled truths. Without thinking, Lucius communicated with his trusted and robotic friend. It clambered up his back and sat on his shoulder with a glint, quite literally, in its singular ocular eye. Blue veins and ribbons ran over the woman and drew in information about would be messiahs.

“I…,” he fell silent. He stood up straight. “I need to explain myself better.” He frowned. Sweat ran down the bridge of his nose and the ridges of his back. Spine, quick with tributaries of worry, tingled with internal circuit’s blazing to keep up with his aching brow. “I can’t really do that with your ‘gun’ pointing at me.”

Alyssa, picking up on the accusation and belittling, but too nude to do anything about it hesitated.

“Why should I trust you?”

“Oh,” Lucius chuckled in a non-threatening but still slightly uncomfortable manner, “you should never trust me. That said,” he relaxed. Jensen, his drone, remained poised on his shoulder. “You should hear me out. If what I say is weird,” he pointed to the door, “I’ll go right back out kicking and screaming at your behest.” With a smile like the one on his face, how could she possibly not pull the trigger?

Good looks and quirky machinery was all Lucius had left to keep himself alive six thousand years hence of his own time and place.

[Alyssa Snow]

Alyssa blinked with the muzzle of her pistol firmly pointed towards him and his hair rising contraption. The past few seconds felt to her like a dream that could only be stirred from a long night of Raiaeran Sweet Wine. The silence mirrored her blank expression and the paused forced Lucius to add a raised brow to his creepy smile.

"Did I fall asleep looking through the notes?" he muttered under her breath. Alyssa's brows scrunched and nose wrinkled. "Feels pretty real..." Her weapon hand laxed during the confusion.

Lucius took a deep breath and exhaled. He shot Jensen an amused glance to which the contraption chittered in reply.

"I mean, some kinda handsome, really creepy, strangely dressed old guy popping out of some light and saying he knows me... That he's been [I]looking[I] for me for years... but tells me I can't trust him?" She continued to mutter while her attention drifted elsewhere. "Has to be a dream right?"

The more she went on, the more the future man considered his escape routes. Trying to explain himself to a rational adult man took just enough finesse that he could manage. A teenage girl muttering to herself half naked? He calculated the odds and they were nowhere in his favor. The window behind him looked better and better each passing second. Especially, since her recap of the conversation upheld his standing six millennial reputation. However, he did come here for a reason, one that fringed on apocalyptic proportions.

Alyssa smacked the sight post of her gun against her forehead and winced. Yup, it was real alright.

Her arm snapped the revolver back on target, wavering between the elder man and the glowing robotic contraption. Both shifted backward at the threat.

"You know..." Alyssa's hips cocked to the side and she clenched the towel to the point of white knuckles. "Most perverts opt for the keyhole or a ladder. While I appreciate your... zeal, I'm going to pretend this little..."

She motioned the muzzle in a small circular pattern.

"Whatever, is just some hazing thing for your pervy bar friends downstairs. That being said," Alyssa began to strafe toward the damp clothes collected on the floor, but her weapon stayed trained. Her eyes never left the two.

"I'm going to take these," she instructed as she grabbed her garbs, "walk behind here (since I can't seem to get relaxed in this place)..."

She shuffled behind a thin wood and paper dressing divider as she mumbled.

Then, she continued when out of view, "and if you're still here when I'm done, I'm going to riddle you and your creepy shoulder accessory with holes. Kapeesh?!"

This would give the otherworldly pair enough time to either spit out a convincing explanation or run for the hills. Alyssa left it to them to decide as she threw the towel over the top and let her sheer nightwear join beside it. Her full, nude figure showed as a shadowy silhouette through the divider. Thaynes help him if he dare take a peep as she dressed.

[Lucius]

Lucius folded his arms his chest. He had to hand it to her. She had balls.

"Are you not in the least bit curious?" he enquired. He had just shown her a robotic spider. With glowing eye and everything. "I mean, I hate to assume...but these opportunities don't just crop up everyday."

Planting the seeds of suspicion and doubt were Lucius's business. He had made a living, of sorts, out of playing people's insecurities off against one another. He struggled to see how could use anything against a woman as headstrong as this one appeared. Balls. Guts. Fearlessness. It reminded him of a friend he had lost long ago, in another lifetime. He smirked.

"I said 'riddle with holes', I'm not sure what you understand," came the plucky reply.

Lucius' lost his smirk, letting the natural frown furrow his brow. Did he bribe her? Did he kidnap her? Did he lie through his teeth to secure her trust, and then tell her the truth when she was warm putty in his hands? Again, he doubted she could be moulded, nevermind lied to. The more he thought about how to win her over, the quicker she got dressed, and the quicker make or break time loomed. He silently cursed.

"Fine. I'll be completely open with you." He dropped his hands to his sides and commanded the drone to move up onto his right shoulder. It magnetised in place, and drew on the energy latent in the cyborg's body. "You are going to destroy the planet, send the people of Althanas reeling into the stars above, and live forever as a paragon."

In the tepid twilight of Alyssa's chamber, Lucius waited on tenterhooks. Every muscle in his body tensed. Every fibre of his clichéd riddled being twisted. He bit his lip, a sweaty ridge of indecision, and fiddled nervously with the placement of his cap's peak.