Somewhere Someplace

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

Yet again, a ticking hand so tocked forth and away, around and round. Antica’s ignited eyes, now again opened, so stared…bored.

Yet again, there she stood…within the confines of a Bureau ‘under-bunker’…wherever place. Similar…conceptually…to the one in Upperberry, albeit not as spacious. Being made primarily from brick and stone of…questionable cleanliness, the space itself being more…dimly lit, it appeared more like a primitive detainment chamber than a ‘safe area’.

And much like the ‘safe area’ in Upperberry, this one was also located underneath an obscure and likely abandoned building within an equally obscure—perhaps neglected—area of this…large settlement. However, the associated hatch and ladder was not the means by which they had entered this under-bunker.

Instead of entering directly from the building above, they first had to walk to a completely different…obscure area of this settlement, whence they then had entered some sort of…covert under-passageway—most likely connected to this settlement’s…waste management and sewage system—which led to here and…other such places.

Indeed, behind Antica’s standing position was a rather hidden sliding stone door of sorts that blended in with the wall, one of…fairly complex primitive design considering it opened via a separate stone pressing slab located next.

Nevertheless, there were…logical reasons for why there were two means of entrance and exit.

For one, this settlement did not have the same…covert luxuries of Upperberry. The…density of this settlement was audibly apparent; there were far too many packed eyes. Likewise, this safe area was one of such locations where Ravens would…‘change forms’; a Raven entering an obscure building and exiting in different forms risked compromising their disguises to would-be peering eyes, essentially.

Thus, the ladder and hatch directly to the settlement above was the exit-entry strictly reserved for those in their ‘disguise forms’, the covert passageway strictly being for those in their ‘openly Raven forms’; two means for two different forms.

Such was, at least, what Novea had actually disclosed to Antica…prior to her departing…

Indeed… Yet again…Antica was alone; left to remain and await. Novea had said that she might be gone for ‘multiple hours’ this time; though, of course, she had not elaborated further, having been even vaguer than she had been before.

Antica stared at that Far Western clock that so continued to tick and tock… She could hear the drips and drops of water leaking; the smell was piercing, although her Remnant facemask filtered much of such.

Antica sighed, finally withdrawing her eyes from that clock… « Quid façhethéon est… » What to do, what to do; she so pondered…

Her cyanic eyes scanned around… There was a stone table of sorts at the center yet devoid of any seats, with nothing on it and nothing around to even place on it; there was…not much in terms of timewasters overall.

She continued to eye, evaluating the stone-brick walls… No map or any such sort pinned. A pity, for she was thinking of…scanning the next primitive map she encountered to add to her records—to synthesize that data and apply that information onto her own…integrated dynamic coordinate map.

Hmm… Map…

Antica extended out her left-arm somewhat, her cyanic eyes looking down at the terminal device affixed… Ever since that recent-in-memory night, she had become more hesitant in using it openly at all, even when the others were not conscious or attentive…

However… being where she was now, there were no risks…of any would-be peering eyes happening a snoop whatsoever. Indeed… Although she was trapped inside of this stone box of a room, such did not mean she could not still satiate her curiosity.

Yet… She stood in place, her legs…her posture… Indeed, she was beginning to perhaps realize… Standing was becoming…rather…heavy—difficult, even. An incomprehensible desire, indeed; she…wanted to find someplace to…just sit.

She had barely rested her mind ever since arriving to Huckleberry, let alone her body and being… And she had quite the many hours of this…utter and total…isolation ahead.

« Hem… » she mumbled, scanning… Her baggy and strained cyanic eyes had identified a…‘bed’ of a kind—though, perhaps even for denizen standards, such could hardly be called one; it was close enough, at least…

She approached this so-called ‘bed’ of sorts and stood before it… No blanket or pillows; just a sheet over a small frame raised above the floor… Comfort was not exactly in the design, yet a desire within her still demanded she sit herself down. However, she already knew that…a certain portable something on her back was not going to allow for any pleasant sitting.

Although she ought to simply continue tolerating such discomforts as she had been for the entirety of this journey, the more she stared, the more she realized… Indeed, maybe she…did not want to keep tolerating it…for just this moment. She was tired—exhausted, even—, and it was as if this so-called bed was beckoning to her, yearning…

Her arms retreated within her smart-cloak’s obscurence, hands motioning behind. Pressing a specific designated button followed by the pressing of another parallelly positioned designated button, her portable storage unit so popped in a sizzling snap, detaching from her equipment harness; she simply allowed it to plop right down onto the ground as if an egg suddenly laid…

The device was stupidly durable; it was fine. Though, just in case…she did double-check… Yes, it was fine—perfect, even.

Her lower-back now emancipated from that portable storage unit’s presence, she promptly…

Continued to stand…

Indeed, she realized… It had not just been her portable storage device that made for an uncomfortable sit. All of her instruments, weapons, pouches, and things… Although she had tuned out such before, all of sudden she had become oddly…hypersensitive to their presence.

Against better protocol adherences, Antica proceeded to—as if bygone primeval instincts were enthralled by that so-called bed—detach her Remnant small-arm and associated carrier, her rapier-conduit and associated carrier, her primitive revolver and associated holster, hastily organizing each next to her portable storage unit. She kept everything else attached to her figure, for this alone should be…sufficient enough.

This done, she finally…sat herself down upon that so-called bed…

Huh… Truly, what a difference sitting was without those predominant hinderances, even if her waist was not completely freed…

This so-called bed was more comfortable than anticipated… Although, the very act of sitting down upon any surface seemed to be…awfully comfortable in general, more so than…ever before in this moment alone… Even if such feelings of ‘comfort’ still remained rather…alien.

Nevertheless, her sitting position established, Antica finally turned her attention to her terminal device, pressing it as the screen flashed on… Her fingers swiping and tapping away as if one with the screen, she promptly accessed her M.C.S and began evaluating her immediate local coordinate map—that which had been generated from the data collected by Bee’s overwatching eye.

Hmm… She stared… Interesting, so this was what a denizen settlement—a city—looked like at this…top-down scale. Considering this was a generated coordinate map, details were intentionally simplified, buildings being reduced to two-dimensional flattened polygons. However, routes, streets, and such—at least that which could be discerned from Bee’s high altitude—were clearly indicated, as well as walls, barriers, and other…such objects.

Hmm… Indeed, there were more details in general than she had expected, frankly. It appeared her M.C.S had predefined parameters for generating representations of denizen settlements… Right, obviously, she knew that; she was just…reminded of that fact.

Her back fell against the so-called bed, laying as her left-arm remained raised before her ignited eyes; her fingers swiped as she laid, zooming out and in as she parsed through this glowing digital map. This city seemed quite sized, albeit maybe not Coastfield-sized. It seemed surprisingly…organized in its layout too, though certain sections—including the one above her position—seemed fairly…twisty in its routes.

Most evidently, however, this city seemed fairly…populated, even at this late hour; a fact most overbearing no thanks to her sentinel highlight-tagging every…single…animate…entity it could detect or infer. Bee was still…perturbed from certain happenings during their journey, seemingly… And her coordinate map was rather…cluttered by highlight tags, consequently.

Hmm… However, she attended to these tagged highlights, zooming in so that she could individuate more precisely… Even in this clutter, she was noticing… Interesting…

She proceeded to apply an ‘exclusion filter’ to her coordinate map, filtering out the ‘full-marked’ green and blue tagged highlights to reduce the clutter and narrow her focus, allowing her to confirm… Indeed, quite a sizable many were ‘grey-marked’, thus grey-greens, grey-blues, and such… More than there ought to be…

Interesting… Such was a tendency she was noticing lately, not only during prior events but…also whenever she would actually take a brief gander at Bee’s filtered activity logs… Her personal sentinel seemed to be having…greater degrees of uncertainty and lack of confidence in its highlight designations and associated tagging overall.

Although she would have to conduct an actual comprehensive review of Bee’s activity logs to confirm a true pattern, this was strange, nevertheless… Bee was usually accurate and precise enough, even if advanced highlight-tagging was not her sentinel’s specialty.

Hmm… She evaluated. Grey-blues, she could understand given…the added complexities in defining, and most of these seemed…clustered together in certain sections. However, there was still a sizable plenty of...grey-marked animals with a small handful of grey-marked chimeras even… Interesting… Was Bee perhaps struggling with differentiating in these cases? …or? Hm…

She continued swiping, skimming through this filtered coordinate map, eyeing highlights of interest. Before, abruptly, her fingers froze in place…

« … » Her mind was processing... What did she just… Promptly, she swiped back to a prior location she had skimmed past, immediately zooming in…

Out in the open, organized in what seemed to be an evenly spaced moving line…were what appeared to be ten…green-blue…highlights? Not…a literal shade of ‘blue-green’ color, but rather…tagged highlights split between green and blue.

« Quid? » What?

Green was a highlight designation exclusive to non-chimeric, non-denizen, and…non-esoteric…lifeforms, such as animals; blue designation being exclusive to denizens and adjacents. A highlight tag was either green or blue; these were mutually exclusive designations and could not overlap.

This designation, therefore, did not exist; Bee created this itself…

Excessive grey-marking was one matter, but this was just…

So odd, indeed, that Bee was seemingly struggling to classify whether these apparent tagged highlights were…denizens or animals… Or, no…not struggling or confusion; only four of these ten green-blue split tags were even grey-marked, the others… Bee had acceptable degrees of certainty… And confusion of this magnitude would have resulted in these tags being marked as anomalous or… Not as an entirely…

Indeed, Bee created an entirely… Was her sentinel possibly trying to reflect what it was seemingly observing but could not classify conventionally? Not anomalous, not pure grey… Green and blue, split…

No, it…had to be confusion; this had to be a fluke.

Either this was Bee’s personality matrix becoming…further time-eroded, or maybe Bee was not used to operating without access to Remnant records… Certainly, the prevalence of advanced complexities in this place was not helping with certainty either. She also would not doubt at all if the sheer sprawling magnitude of a certain…Calamitous abomination’s…entangled roots was creating a…‘cloud’ of…perpetual confusion—as it so loved to do—, screwing with Bee’s detection accuracy.

Though… It was…most likely that Bee’s altitude was simply too high and had too large of an observation scope; that was Antica’s primary hunch, frankly.

Hmm… Yet even so, her mind lingered… Her attention remained glued to those ‘green-blue’ highlight tags… Truth be told, she trusted her sentinel too much to convince herself these were pure flukes; indeed, these were perhaps a bit too precise to be mere confusion.

She was curious, indeed…

She zoomed out… Their location was in a completely different chunk of this large city with respect to her position, so Bee’s attention was most certainly not the strongest, yet…

Hmm… The tagged blips were moving through an open street; their single line remained cohesive; their speed and the space between each remained constant. She removed the filter in order to see…what other tagged highlights were possibly around and immediately spotted four denizen blue tags flanking the line in a square, maintaining pace… Hmm… Were they being shepherded, perhaps? If so, then to where?

Antica sighed, zooming out and looking at the map as a whole. Her ignited eyes burned from the staring; it was becoming harder to focus… Truly, staring at this coordinate map could only do much to satiate her curiosity in absence of direct visual confirmation…

Hmm… Movement underneath her cloak, she could detect… Fly, having been gently hibernating beneath her cloak this entire time, had repositioned itself after her back had come tumbling down to the so-called bed, and was now indecisive as to where to hibernate, seemingly.

Hmm… Right, Fly. She lowered her left-arm away as her strained cyanic eyes glanced at that ladder and hatch in front of sight though away.

Indeed… She had the means for such visual confirmation…

However, one glaring difficulty quickly presented itself… In order to deploy Fly into the world beyond, Antica would have to…detach from this so-called bed’s embrace… And she was too thoroughly affixed to it, engulfed practically; she could not leave it.

Alternatively, she could simply ask Bee directly regarding these peculiar tags… Yet she could not even muster the means to lift her arms to do such… They refused to move.

Indeed, Antica laid there, ignited eyes staring at the ceiling above… The more she laid, the more she realized how…much her mind throbbed and pulsated to even continue cogitating.

Her exhaustion. Her lack of any sleep. Truly, all of it was now…unraveling. Always guarded; always on edge; at any moment, from any angle, she could suddenly be…struck.

Yet… Indeed… She was trapped inside of this…stone alien box, isolated completely. There were no threats; no dangers to be guarded by; no…possibility of any sudden ambush… In this stone box, she was hidden; she could…stand down…

Left-arm dangling away, her mind slipped and slipped; her ignited eyes gradually shut, as all around fell into blackened obscurity. Antica, thus, fell asleep. And time began to pass and pass.

-||-

It was the dead of night; many hours had passed, things having taken longer than expected or desired. The covert door to that safe box of an area so opened; a cloaked figure stepped in from the under-passageway.

“Tsk. Assholes…” Boots kicked into the solid ground as a fist slammed, in effect, into the pressing slab; the hidden door slid closed behind.

However, such an overt affective display was perhaps not necessarily done just to let out frustrations in privacy, but rather…perhaps as an implicit signal to another who was expected to be present. However, as mask-obscured eyes so peered, the figure would come to find that…the other was, in fact, not technically present even if physically so...

“Huh…” Such breaths gently mumbled.

In mellow silence, the rather weary Novea approached the sleeping Antica, halting before that…bunker-bed, albeit not even she could consider such to be a ‘bed’…even if sufficiently so enough.

“Hm…” Novea leaned down a little as she peered, evaluating… Yep, Antica was still breathing; truly, that enigma looked so lifeless when she slept. “This a little…surprising… Not only that you’re actually asleep, but that you…managed to fall asleep on…that” Novea’s breaths so remarked; her mind was perhaps too tired…to keep her thoughts contained within.

Exhaling just a little, Novea moved to back away, yet… “Woah…” she nearly tripped over Antica’s…stuff so laying on the ground. “Huh…” Novea recaptured her balance, immediately looking, seeing; “Oh, I didn’t even…” She had not even noticed until…her nearly tripping… She sighed; “For someone so mysterious, you really suck at being…secretive sometimes…”

Yet another surprise, indeed; Antica had…actually taken such things off for once. Novea looked at the equipment so left on the ground… Truly, besides Antica’s revolving-pistol, Novea still had not the words to describe the rest of these…silver-white…alien things she was looking at.

She knew what two out of them were, at least… One was obviously Antica’s powerful…arcane shooter of sorts, the other was obviously that…even stranger…sword-hilt…blade… She had not the words; not this moment, at least… But it was that rapier-like thing that Antica always seemed to carry…yet never seemed to use. Indeed, Novea always wondered why Antica even had this considering she did not seem to be a melee fighter whatsoever.

She hunched down, peering closer… Truly, the strangeness did not even appertain exclusively to these…weapons themselves, but also the…very things that so facilitated their affixing to Antica’s figure; even something as simple as a ‘holster’ seemed bizarrely alien.

Hmm… “What’s this?” Novea turned her attention to the other of these alien things, one that she had not seen in any proper detail before…

She assessed… Its shape, its size, its…

Indeed, Novea did not need to comprehend any of these Antican things…to know that she was staring at some kind of…storage-thingy—it had to be one, what else…could it be? Throughout this whole journey, Antica’s posture—particularly while sitting—always seemed to convey that…there was something prominent on her back. This had to be that something, considering Antica was laying flatly…

Novea sighed, standing herself back up. She proceeded to lower her hood, exposing her light-maple hair, as she took off her corvid mask, revealing her…evidently baggy and drained…hazel-amber eyes, freeing the skin of her face as she lowered the facemask worn underneath… Having worn her mask for far too long, it truly…was such relief to be breathing unmolested again.

Immediately after, Novea turned her now exposed hazel-amber eyes back to Antica… Approaching once again, she proceeded to sit down, practically, onto her knees…as she just…peered…

Contemplations, cogitations, reflections… Many such things encroached upon her mind.

“You really are weird, you know that?” she so mellowly remarked… “Your…cloak, your outfit, your gear, your magic, your… Everything, everything about you…” Novea’s eyes peered at Antica’s head, her hood having lowered itself just a little… “You still haven’t taken off that…” Novea sighed yet again; “It’s amazing how you…actually survived that… My life would be so much worse right now… Ugh…”

Novea peered a little closer… Despite Antica’s sleeping closed eyes, there were still evident bags. And Novea herself did not need to gaze into a mirror to feel the bagginess of her own eyes…

Indeed, it was almost like… “I am starting to look more like you, aren’t I?” she…remarked aloud; “Except…maybe not as…pretty… You are…pretty pretty…” She…promptly blushed a little… “Sorry, I don’t mean to be creepy, but…there’s something relaxing…about…” She was going to…say, but then paused; “No, that… that is…creepy…” She…withdrew her peer, sighing… “…don’t be blinded; don’t be stupid… I need to…” She mellowly exhaled again… “Distance…”

She stood herself up a bit, eyes becoming lowly as they…drifted aside, only to then…abruptly fixate, focusing… as she finally noticed…such an emanating glow… “Huh…” Novea stared, curious…

That…object on Antica’s left-arm—which was so dangling off from that not-exactly-but-close-enough bed… It was still…

Promptly, Novea’s eyes shifted to Antica proper; breaths…tensed… Sudden considerations, deliberations…decisions… Personal curiosity in combination with mandated obligations… All such things began to flare within… Yet… “Always keep my eyes open; my ears always sharp…” She took one big…decisive breath.

Novea kneeled down and began to peer, eyes drifting cautiously closer to that…object on Antica’s forearm. “What even…” She tried to parse what exactly her eyes were seeing… “A map…?” she inferentially identified… “This has to be...”

Indeed, Remnant terminal devices did not seem to have any basic automatic ‘hibernation’ whereby the screen would deactivate after prolonged periods of inactivity… Instead, such simply remained on and active until told otherwise…

Despite…all of these uncountable eons…of this being the case…

Warning: Desynchronization

“Huh… So, I was…right?” Novea became even more interested, prior inferences from that night having been confirmed… “What a weird…” Although she had parsed that this was some kind of map being displayed, it was still unlike any…she had ever seen. However, there were…familiarities; shapes that likely denoted…buildings, and routes that had to be streets… Indeed, despite being so alien, it was ultimately…a map—a city-like map… “Huh… Is this Strawberry? Or?”

She peered even closer, though…she tried to avoid directly touching or lifting Antica’s arm, even if the dangling angle made for an awkward…inspection.

“Huh… These…dots? Circles? Moving…” she noticed; “Different colors and sizes, so… Green, blue… A few seem shaded or…outlined or… So, they must mean something, but…how are you supposed to even distinguish… Like, the whole… The coloring is so… It’s just…”

Oh, trust me, they can tell…

Their color perception is…exceptionally potent

They can easily differentiate between similar color shades…

Even when there is so much…noise and dilution

It is one of those…bizarre quirks of theirs…

Nevertheless, Novea had noticed that these few…strange dots or blips on this map were active; moving and such… Indeed, “a flat map, but it seems so…alive? Are these…representing… What, people? Or…? And how… How is it…keeping track of… I can’t…” Novea sighed, her mind was starting to throb… “You… I thought your stuff could not…be any weirder…”

You know, most Remnant troopers would have…awoken by now

She would have awoken well before this point

Yet her essence seemingly trusts you

Fascinating…

By all means, do continue, cute little birdie…

Novea continued to…snoop at Antica’s digital screen, trying to discern more and more… However, staring alone was becoming insufficient. She realized that what was being displayed was a mere part of a…greater map, and she inferred that…touching this…thing—as Antica had been observed doing countless times—might…move it?

Frankly, she was just wanted…a little poke due to her own…curiosity.

Thus, Novea’s index finger…cautiously began to encroach towards the digital display… Closer and closer…before, finally, her finger made the striking poke. And, as if a puddle reacting to her touch, the display so…waved in reply. However, almost immediately:

Zap.

“Ouch!” Novea reactively withdrew her stung finger, grasping it as she backed off… “Ack, that hurt…” Quickly rebounding, she relooked at the display… It was completely different, flashing brighter and pulsing in…antagonistic red and orange; the map was gone…

thus screeched silently in pulsating glow, text almost throbbing.

“Uh…” Novea…was more bewildered than startled, unable to read the language.

thus such text flashed, a keypad digitizing into existence.

“That does not…look good…” she so astutely observed… “It’s not…changing back… She is…going to know when she wakes up…” Novea…backed away… “I’ll just… I’ve done enough… I’ll just let her sleep a little longer, and then…try to wake her up… That’ll be my cover—accident… Accident…” thus her spoken aloud breaths so decided…

She proceeded to back away to the wall directly behind, her back sliding against it as she…slipped down… Breathing in and out, her baggy eyes just gazed up… “I should…sleep a little, but… Hasn’t been worth it lately… Not worth it…” her tired breaths just whispered in mutter.