reverielogs | [open] Hello, world!

Entry tags:

[open] Hello, world!

» WHO? Tyl Regor and YOU! Yes, you specifically!
» WHEN? Day of his arrival
» WHERE? Around the station.
» WHAT? Awakening, first-aid, unwise decisions, and monologuing!
» WARNINGS? Prompt #2 contains blood, injury, medical situation.

01. Arrival

Again. Again! Filthy lizards, how dare they! Breaking, contaminating everything! His Tubemen, his tomb, his favorite set of hands! Organs, too, several of them. Definitely several. There had been pain. So much pain, more parts to repair and replace. Goodbye, kidney, ungrateful little creature.

And he still hurt. But he was awake now, wasn't he? Yes. Yes, he could smell things, dreams didn't do that. But what he smelled was wrong. Not his lab. Not lesser labs, not even a butcher's block on some stinking galleon. Couldn't describe it. Maybe Corpus? Why? How? He couldn't see. Was he blind? Who did this?

Oh. His faceplate was askew. He reached up with an elbow to fix it, but found instead that he had hands. His hands. Good!

But not. This wasn't a Corpus ship either. The wrong metal, the wrong lights. The right hum, but it was through the deck, not whining from the little engines of Ospreys, the poxy, proxy metal flies--

"We tried to save the world. I think— I think we did the opposite."

"Who is there?" No one answered. That wasn't going to stop him. "Someone rude. Awful, nasty behavior. Take me from my work, my progress," He pushed himself up--Ngh, his head! Nauseous, but clear-eyed, could remember things, probably no brain damage. "Tenno leeches wriggling through my home and you bring me here!" His feet tik-tik-tiked across the floor as he paced. "Unacceptable. Unbelievable. So who? Not Tenno, not their Lotus, pseudo-Tenno doesn't care. Not Corpus. Perrin peaceniks? Hexus bores? Maybe. Why? Why the capture, why the limbs, who would be idiot enough to--"

"We tried to save the world. I think— I think we did the opposite."

"Don't interrupt!" That's it. He was breaking down the walls and leaving. Goodbye.

Oh. The door wasn't locked. Hm.

Tik-tik-tik down the empty corridor, looking for something to accost for this transgression.

02. Medical [warning: blood, injury, and cyborg medical stuff!]

Stupid, stupid kidney. It couldn't make a graceful exit. Well fine, he'd never liked it anyway. Or maybe it wasn't the kidney. But something in there was being annoyingly fussy. Might be bleeding somewhere, or an implant still needed repairs. Well, he'd wanted to find out if this station had a medical bay regardless.

And it did! He was honestly surprised. Well then! Time to take stock.

Ow. No. Couldn't wait. Time to take himself apart instead. Whatever's in easy reach will have to do for now, nosing through the cabinets later. Examine, diagnose, fix what's gone wrong.

And so Regor can be found in the medbay, sitting on one of the beds with a tray of tools and medical supplies next to him, muttering under his breath.

A portion of his suit has been pulled open, revealing an unpleasant sight: ashy-pale skin, shot through with dark metallic tubing and ports leading to more devices hidden beneath the flesh. He's covered in bruises, the worst of which is an angrily inflamed patch around one of the ports. At its center is an open wound, slowly bleeding down to the boundary line between flesh and metal. An indicator light next to it is flickering.

"What idiot put me back together?" he wonders aloud, examining the damage. "Nothing's finished! Mental note: Remember this, when I get back. Find them, give them another scalpel and make them--Rhh! Katrarr!"

He gasps, pulling his hand away. His initial diagnosis: Everything hurts, and he hates life.

03. A Hallway Somewhere

Patched up, dosed with whatever antibiotics and painkillers he could find, and recovering. Brain still buzzing from the stress of messing about in his own torso. Not the first time he'd done it, though results were usually more elegant.

Now. Time to take something else apart. Namely, that wall over there. He'd found a likely-looking section where there was enough space for his fingers to grip the edge of the plating and pull. This wasn't the right pair for heavy work, but those hands were probably still back in his lab, somewhere.

Oh well! "Getting into the guts of something's always the best way to learn how to deal with it," he said, apparently addressing the wall itself as he braced to pull. "And you certainly deserve it." The plating was loose, slowly beginning to warp under his grip. "Open wide..."

He almost gets a look. Almost. But a wave of dizziness and nausea leaves him reeling, losing his grip on the plating and staggering back. "What--?"

It isn't easy to balance on thin little running blade feet when you might've just been poisoned by something. He stumbles, sinking to his knees against the opposite wall. What was that? Oh, if he's just been irradiated, he's going to be so angry.

04. Observation Deck

Another trip to medical later to check himself over, and he's feeling less terrible. The sickness had been temporary. And his earlier patch-job on himself was still holding together. A little more antibiotics, just in case. Had to be careful, though always had side effects.

Side effects usually didn't include astronomical hallucinations, so he was going to have to conclude: He didn't know that planet. He didn't like that planet, on principle.

Did any of this nonsense have to do with the Sentients? None of this looked like the tomb he'd cracked open, too primitive, too plain. But it had still managed to snatch him out of the heart of the Grineer Empire and dump him here, somewhere that couldn't possibly be the Origin System. So he couldn't call for reinforcements, have this place taken apart piece by piece and melt it down to slag.

It was on the To-Do List, but he had no idea how long it would take. "No time for any of this," he groused. "Work's not gonna wait, genome's not gonna wait. Queens won't either." Which was going to be a disaster. "Find someone else, someone's going to take over, take my science!" Unthinkable! "Someone's sticky hands all over my work! Incompetent second-rate tinkerers ripping up all my progress--" His organs not-so-gently reminded him that he was gesticulating too energetically for their tastes at the moment. For a moment, he just stood there and wheezed.

"You're going to regret this," he finally manages, pointing a finger at the planet. Disappointingly, it doesn't answer.

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Haruto was on his way to the gym for more swimming practice, which is why he's wearing just some tight fitting swim trunks and carrying a towel. When he sees someone decidedly... odd looking... swaying in place after seemingly having dug into the wall, he stops, a concerned smile on his face.

"Yeah... That happens when you try to go into the walls. Do you need help with something in there?"

"What's in there? Why's it do that?" He hauls himself back up onto incongruously dainty metal feet, leaning heavily against the wall. "How can I tell it how much I despise it?"

"And am I interrogating a hallucination of a human in tiny pants, or are you really dressed like that?"

"Nobody really knows...?" He doesn't like giving new people that answer, but finds himself doing it surprisingly often. "I suppose you could complain to CIRSTA but there's nothing she can do about it."

Suddenly sheepish, he clutches his folded towel to his chest.

"I-I was on my way to the gym! There's a swimming pool there."

"Is it radiation? Poison?" He was half talking to himself at this point, glaring fixedly at the offending stretch of wall. That name was useful information, though. He was absolutely going to complain to someone.

Again, if this conversation was actually happening. He was just going to assume it was, because his perception of events was really the only thing that mattered here. "So. Taken suddenly and mysteriously to a moldering tin can in uncharted space, but secretly it's more powerful than can be explained, stuffed full of fiendish security systems, advanced technology. And a gym."

Whoever set this up had no sense of style whatsoever.

Haruto gets the feeling he's not exactly a part of this conversation anymore. Which leaves him feeling more than a little out of place.

"I take it you've just arrived?"

"Unfortunately." And who knew how long he'd been unconscious before then? "Ooh, this is such an inconvenience. Need to get back to work. Probably not going to happen soon. At least not the right way." Maybe he could scrape together a lab here, but he'd waste so much time rebuilding all his data, all his samples, all his--

He finally turns his head back to look at the human. "There's no cloning equipment here, is there?" Who knew. Maybe they'd stuck it right next to the pool.

Haruto backs up half a step at the absurd and frankly unsettling question. "N-no? I don't think so?"

And then, at the risk of being rude but too curious to stop himself, "Is that what you are? A clone?"

"Hrgh." Of course he wouldn't be so lucky. "Well. I can make the vats anyway. If the walls don't object." Another glare gets directed at the architecture.

"I'm one of the best, and making us better." Was, at least. Now stuck here, frustrated, angry, et cetera, et cetera. "No templates here, though. Would have to start from scratch." Take samples from himself. He'd done it before, wasn't pleasant. Needed stem cells for best results, and those hid in all sorts of hard to reach places. And given how much of his body had been given over to cybernetics at this point, there weren't many options left. Oh well. "Something to do while figuring out what makes this place tick."

But there were still other questions to be distracted by first. "You are human, aren't you?" He peered closer at whoever this was. Normally he'd have a better handle on these things, but, well. Wall-sickness, and the painkillers he'd taken from the medbay. They were making his brain buzz at a different pitch than usual.

"You-- What?" Was this person really thinking of cloning people? That seems so absurd to Haruto, and frankly like a waste of resources they could be using to survive, or find a way off this station.

The closeness of the stranger's gaze makes Haruto lean away, backing up another step. This really wasn't what he had in mind when he decided to go swimming...

"Um. Mostly? But technically, no." He wasn't hiding his true nature from the people aboard Reverie anymore, so he had no reason to lie, as disturbed as he was by the level of inquiry.

"You don't think that just beacause I'm trapped, I'm going to stop my science? Not a chance. Got to keep working. Grineer genome's not gonna wait." Neither were the Queens. That was his immediate concern, moreso than slow degeneration.

And that meant latching onto every opportunity he got. "Interesting. Tell me more."

"I don't think you understand. We're all stuck here, with limited resources. You have to consider the rest of us, not just your side projects."

It's just like how the people addicted to nicotine can't smoke here because it pollutes the air for everybody. Haruto didn't have any trouble adapting to station life, but he has a feeling this person-- whose name he still doesn't know, now that he thinks of it-- might have a harder time.

"I have an artificial brain. I'm an AI, but my body is human. And my name is Haruto, by the way. Haruto Saitou."

"No, you've not heard what I just said," he loomed closer, the effect undercut by how badly he was wobbling. "Grineer are sinking in a rotten genetic soup, I'm considering them. Got to lift us up, or we all drown in mutation." And no! He didn't care about anyone else. Not his concern. If he had to rebuild the entire Empire here to make it work, he would. He didn't want to, it would be slow and boring compared to what he could do back in his labs, but he'd do it.

And dammit he was too dizzy to focus on progress right now. He swayed in place for a long moment before responding. "...You're a Cephalon inside a skull. A cephalic Cephalon." Weird! Far outside of his field of study, but interesting. "I hadn't expected to run into a walking pun today."

No, he didn't take the hint to introduce himself.

"I don't know what a Cephalon is. Or a Grineer." Though he can probably gather that that's what this person is. A Grineer clone? Or is Grineer just a special word for clones? He doesn't know and isn't sure he wants to.

"Most of the people here are human. There are some androids, and some mutants, I think. And an alien or two. But your people aren't here."

"You're the former, I'm the latter." Simple. Not at all complicated or confusing terminology in any way.

"That's not--" His brain caught up with the sentence, and he interrupted himself. "--Aliens. What kind."

This is feeling less and less like filling in a new passenger and more and more like a strange interrogation.

"Um... One calls herself a gem, and the other calls herself a... troll, I think?" He shrugs helplessly. "I don't know if those are the technical terms though."

"Oh, and there's also a half-vampire and a quarter-yokai. Eighth... yokai? It might actually by more like sixteenth..."

Haruto, start over.

"There are two men who can turn into wolves, I mean."

"No Sentients." He'd deal with the whole 'undiscovered alien lifeforms' thing later. His immediate fear that this was something he could be blamed for was assuaged.

Although. "Anyone called the Lotus? Controlling, self-righteous, overbearing headgear?"

Not hearing the distinction of the capital S, Haruto argues, "Well, they are sentient, actually. And I don't think they'd like hearing you say that they're not..."

But this Grineer fellow probably doesn't care what other people think.

"Um... I don't think so? Not that I've noticed."

"The Sentients. Killed an Empire that enslaved us. Nasty, unpredictable things. Interesting, though. I would have loved a chance to really get a look at them." Ahem, Lotus.

"Good. Don't trust her. Her army of brainwashed little lizards is up to something. Maybe this thing. They already snatch people, lots of them." On some level he doubted she was wrapped up in this, but on the other hand, she'd been responsible for a persistent level of stress and frustration in his life recently. She was the obvious culprit.

"Oh. Sorry. No, they're not here."

Haruto resists the urge to say that he'll probably never meet this Lotus person, instead just shaking his head and answering, "No one knows who or what is bringing us here. But this station originated on Earth. Um. An Earth."

"Earth?" Would make sense. All this stuff was designed for someone human-shaped. "That dirtball is not worth the trouble it keeps putting us through." Yes, yes, it was habitable, apart from the bio-engineered megaforests that tore apart any and all buildings with malice aforethought, and there were old Orokin and Sentient wrecks there that could still be salvaged, and there was at least one of their towers still operating under its own power that might be made of meat, BUT.

It really wasn't worth it. Not compared to what they could be doing elsewhere.

And wait. A significant article had been dropped into that last thing the cephalon said. "An Earth. This is that other dimensions talk, isn't it?" Oh, that was disappointing. He'd been hoping for more far-flung alternative realities, ones with really novel forms of life. Universes with a little imagination, something with style. But it would explain why so many humans were here.

Haruto makes a face at hearing the Grineer call Earth a 'dirtball,' but makes no comment.

"Yes, or at least that's one theory. There are people here from the same planet," (or solar system) "but with different histories. And then there are some humans here who have never heard of Earth."

"It's the simplest explanation." Yes, he really does think that. "Void travel's one thing, but this is a step beyond. Probably not Orokin. Would've used this if they had it, never let go of us if they could."

But. "Interesting. But not my field. Don't know how it works, never bothered with it." Yes, figuring out how technocyte could integrate Void energies was something that he'd eventually have gotten to. But the field was drowning in obsessives that were such a bore to deal with, he'd stayed away from it. Kept with good, solid, meaty problems that squished between your fingers.

O...kay... Haruto really doesn't know how to respond to, well, any of that. He doesn't know what Orokin means, though he can gather from context it's another species or race of people that interact with the Grineer in some way.

"Wel... If you need any help settling in, I'm on Deck Three, Room Nine. I've been here since we first started arriving so I can answer a lot of the usual questions." Though he's starting to suspect the Grineer (whose name he still doesn't know) would have less usual questions to ask.

It was so obviously someone else. So many of the proportions and colors were entirely wrong. But one look at those glowing oculars in a smooth metal face, and Cassian's breath caught in his throat. Before he could stop himself, he croaked out, "Kay?"

What. "What?" He turns to look at--A human. Trundling around on ungainly organic legs, staring at him.

"I'm busy feeling sorry for myself at the moment, you'll have to do better than that."

Okay, that didn't help. Voice wrong; syntax and attitude… very, very familiar.

"I'm sorry," managed Cassian, finding a hard surface to brace his hand against. "You reminded me of my friend."

He leaned closer. "Your friend. Do you know Grineer?" Everyone he'd talked to had been utterly clueless. Due to dimensional oddities, temporal differences, spent their lives under greasy rocks in the middle of nowhere, who knew.

But it still didn't sound right. Kay sounded like a Grineer name, but Grineer didn't really have human friends.

"I don't." He didn't even know if Grineer was an individual or a species. He examined Tyl's faceplate more carefully and felt foolish for ever thinking it could be Kay. Even those glowing oculars were yellow, not white. But wishful thinking…

"I'm sorry to interrupt," he said lamely. "You seemed to be talking to someone before."

"Typical," he sighed bitterly. "We're everywhere except here." Well, he could change that. Technically already had, but not properly. Without a cloning lab it was going to be hard.

"I was talking to that," he points at the planet out the window. It was just sitting there, mocking him. "To this floating, festering box we're in. My work's too important for this. Already had enough interruptions, can't just stop n--"

Yes, he could, in fact. Had to stop, cringe for a moment, bring a hand to the front of his suit, where some dried blood was still visible. Had to take smaller breaths until things healed up. Which was an unconscionable affront to his desire to rant.

"I'm very upset," he managed finally.

Cassian offered an apologetic smile. "In my own experience of railing against planets, the planets tend to win."

He reflexively put out a hand toward the other when Tyl cringed, though Cassian stopped shy of touching him. Cassian thought quickly, rifling through the mental deck…

…and chose a card. "What is your work?"

[[ooc: so funny story I had no idea how tall Tyl was until I went to look it up just now, because he so rarely stands up straight in his boss fight. Minus some armor he didn't bring to Reverie, he's 7'6"/229 cm. He's a full 13 cm taller than Kay. holy crap.]]

"Oh, no. It just takes time. And a bigger fleet." One which the Grineer didn't have at the moment, thanks to certain squawking heads he could mention. Thanks, Hek.

"Oh, saving the Grineer from extinction, that's all." He straightened back up slowly, carefully. "Fix Grineer genes, make them better than anyone's." The Grineer were already better. They just needed a genome to match. One that didn't break as often.

[ooc: Ha!!]

Cassian's blood chilled. Like dying to prevent a fleet (or a single station) from being able to "win" against a planet will do. He would never again mistake this individual for Kaytu. (Except perhaps pre-reprogram.)

But, whether Tyl was deluded in thinking this a temporary interlude, or Cassian was deluded in thinking (hoping) he was here now (in this new lease on life) for a good while, for the moment they were literally in the same boat. So Cassian eased back into a comfortable position beside the much taller being, determined to learn rather than to judge. "Grineer are in danger of extinction from something genetic?"

"Cloning decay. Orokin made wrong from the start, on purpose. We broke free, we won. Didn't fix us, though, no, now centuries on, more and more falling apart in the vats before they're ready. Like meat in soup." It was disgusting, infuriating.

"I had the numbers, I can fix us. But not here. No data, no lab, no--" Hrgh! "--no kidney. Replacement's not taken yet." A slow, shaking breath, speaking more precisely and quietly, "Can't get loud, or it reminds me." He was inevitably going to fail at that within minutes.

"I see."

He actually did. And sympathy was on the rise again. There were similar issues in the Clone Wars. For all Cassian had been on the other side of them, it wasn't the Clones themselves he'd hated—indeed, some of the Separatists had considered the cruelty/fascism of creating clones to be docile to be among the war crimes they fought against. (Their own droid army being something of a blind spot at the time…)

Experimentally, whether or not he believed it but looking for the actionable course, Cassian said, "Perhaps there's something you can learn here to ultimately bring back with you. Meanwhile, can I get you anything for the pain?" A chair, to start?

Edited 2018-09-14 09:08 (UTC)

"I plan on it. This revolting, revolving tin can Reverie can't stop me." He'd bring back something. Samples, tech, the whole station if he had to. Failure wasn't acceptable.

He waved a hand dismissively. "Already took painkillers when I did the surgery, more won't help." They seemed to be wearing off fast, but there was a wooziness under that which meant the drugs were still in his system, they'd just given up on doing the useful part of their job. Up the dose, and risk more side effects. And admittedly, in the initial high of the painkillers he'd self-administered, he'd gone and done some things he shouldn't have. No one would ever hear that admission spoken aloud, though.

"Greedy station must've grabbed me right out from the middle of anesthesia. Wasn't sewn up all the way." He glared at one of the walls. "How does it do it? I was in my lab. Hard to get down there, harder to get out." Unless the Tenno lizards had dragged him. Maybe that was their fault too. But then how would he end up with new Grineer-made parts?

Lucifer hadn't really gotten to go to the medbay since being impaled by a sword. He had been fine and all, but really, he needed to give it a little check, and he's hoping maybe he'll find Alucard there and get a moment or two alone with him, but instead he comes in to see this awful-looking flesh machine hybrid, and he just stands there and stares for a little while, more curious than disgusted.

Thankfully for now, despite being about six feet tall and having a weird facial scar, he looked human enough! No wings were currently manifested, so the guy just looks like a human dude, checking out some weird biomachine crap. The blood is something, though.

"Need some help there, bud?"

He wasn't a healer by any means, but like. He sounded like he was having a tough time. Maybe more hands could help? "You know we've got some medics kind on board... kind of."

He refocused, when he heard a voice, If he wasn't sitting on the bed, he'd be a foot and a half taller than the abominably human-looking interloper. But he was sitting, and he was likely going to stay that way until he'd fixed this hack-job he'd been subjected to.

"Think I lost a kidney. Don't know, I wasn't there." He was knocked unconscious for who knew how long--no brain damage though, he was certain of that!--and then whoever scraped him off the floor kept him in a coma, either medically induced or one he'd already started all by himself.

"New implants in there anyway. But they didn't finish. I'm not sewn up, and this says something's not right," he gestured to the flickering light embedded in the skin next to it. "So I don't care if there's medics, unless they know Grineer parts, I'm doing this myself." With some local analgesics so he could dig into the problem. He had some here, where were they--Ah, the one with the funny-shaped blood smear, right.

Now he just needed to load the injector, which wasn't exactly easy at the moment, even with metal hands. They were still hooked up to his nervous system, which was feeling really overworked today.

He's just going to watch, folding one arm over his chest and resting his other elbow in his hand in order to just... cup a cheek and watch this weird bio-mechanical being working on himself in a possibly kind of condescending way.

It is a little condescending. He's the devil, what do you expect?

"You've got a convenient little check-engine light? Neat. Bet humans wish they could have one." He's just going to let the guy work on himself though. If he doesn't want someone with medical experience helping, there was no use in offering his own help. Instead, he was going to have a good time watching, whether the strange guy liked it or not.

"Man, those fingers don't look like they're easy to work with. The androids definitely got a better deal. Least you got a nice butt though."

It might be full of analgesic, but the injections hurt. And he was not going to acknowledge that. Instead he was going to take out his frustration the healthy way: dumping it on others.

"If you're not human, why are you so ugly?" Usually he would come up with something more inventive, but he was not at the top of his game at the moment.

"They're easier than flabby little meat hands," he mutters, managing to get the injector filled by the power of spite alone. "Versatile. Replaceable. Not covered in... hand squiggles." He couldn't remember what they were called. Little lines all over human hands so they could grip things better. Stupid way to do things. What if you stuck your hands in something caustic? The squiggles would just fall off!

But as always, his attention span was short. "I designed it personally." He'd calculated the ideal curvatures to match his aesthetic. His backside wasn't just nice, it was a custom-built work of art.

Unlike whatever was going on in his insides at the moment. Now that things were beginning to numb, he could prop the incision open to get a look at how badly things had been botched. Which would be much easier if it weren't his own torso he was working on. "Hold that." He gestures to a mirror on the tray next to him.

"It's probably my age. I'm real old."

Lucifer has to laugh at that. Something very alien was certainly at the core of this metal man, finding humanity ugly and complaining about hand squiggles. "My hands are also versatile and replaceable", he replied. "As are my hand-squiggles!" He was never calling them anything but that ever again. "You've never seen someone who could do as many things with their meaty hands as I can."

He's not going to demonstrate. Not right now, anyway, far too lazy for that. He will give the booty another once-over though. The guy's personality was shitty but like, whatever? If he avoided people because they had shitty personalities, he wouldn't have a single friend or fuck-buddy! "A good design if I do say so myself. Did you do the whole body then?" Hey, he could appreciate a good thing.

And interested as he was in the answer to his question, he wasn't going to bother the guy by being more troublesome than he needed to be, simply picking up the mirror and holding it out, angled towards the guy.

"I'll believe the boasting when I see something interesting," he managed through clenched teeth. At the moment, he wasn't focusing on the hands. He was looking at his own reflected guts. Nothing in past the incision was numbed, and was not pleased about being prodded at (again).

"All of it. Customized for ideal form and function. Except this part, obviously." Due to his ideas on how best to arrange viscera in a redesigned torso, the kidney wasn't where nature had intended it to be. That was good, otherwise he'd have had to pull out so much before he could get to it. Instead...

"They didn't finish plugging it in. Idiots." There was a trailing blue cable, coiled haphazardly next to a shiny new gray and red synthetic organ. He sighed. "They couldn't even leave me a difficult problem to solve."

That was fair, honestly. Lucifer always did appreciate someone who believed in the things he saw, not only what he was told.

And now, on the one hand, he was Lucifer. What did he have to prove? Who was this guy? He'd be nothing but dust someday and Lucifer would be the same as he ever was, and as he'd ever be. But on the other hand, he WAS Pride Incarnate. "Alright then", he replied, more than happy to demonstrate something. Something, something... something interesting.

"Watch this. Now, pay close attention, I'm only going to do this once." At that, Lucifer held the mirror with two hands, one on top and one on the bottom, spinning it just once before he made it disappear! It hadn't really disappeared of course, it was sleight of hand! But that wasn't really the trick he was meaning to show with his hands, and four black wings burst from his back as he pointed a finger towards the open wound, a small puff of wind shooting from it before Lucifer does another flourish to reappear the mirror between his hands, pointing it back where it was needed.

"Ta-da!" He wasn't really well-versed in healing magic or anything, but it should make the area fairly numb, at the least. "Told you my hands were great."

"Very f--" Wait. What? Where did those come from? What was--

Wait. He couldn't feel his intestines anymore! Good! Those finicky gut-worms never liked being handled.

He leaned as far as he could from where he was seated, trying to get a look at the wings. "You're the one from the network," he finally realized. "And possibly magical."

Oh, and the mirror was back! Excellent. He got back to work, talking more freely now as he stuck a pair of forceps into his own torso. "Oh, the Tenno wouldn't be happy about that. Breaking the laws of reality's always been their game, no one else's. They'd be jealous. Frightened, even!" This obviously pleased him to no end.

Doing surgery on yourself was always better when properly numbed! Especially when it didn't end up in being intoxicated. You've got to have your head about you when handling scalpels.

"You've got it. 'Mourningstar'. Lucifer Morningstar, to be precise, a pleasure to meet you." That's it, that's all he needed. Just a little ego fluffing and now he's much more personable. And he definitely enjoys the idea of being frightening!

"What name do you go by?" Which honestly he asked because despite his username clearly LOOKING like a name, he didn't want to look like a fool and say 'Tyl' wrong. Or have it be his last name... or his FIRST name, and then maybe he'd be being rude by using it. Yadda yadda, he doesn't really get nonhuman stuff quite yet. They're all so wildly different.

"Tyl. Tyl Regor." It was a solidly Grineer name, simple and easy to pronounce. Which meant outsiders were totally clueless about how it worked. Sure, a Grineer with an especially thick accent would sometimes call him 'Tuhl', but at least they never called him 'Tile'. It was 'Till'. Some of them had to be doing that on purpose.

But he was feeling a little more charitable towards this one and their weird, overly-long name. "It's a relief to find something like you. I was told this place was full of extra-dimensional oddities, but it's been so disappointing. Everything else here has been so distressingly human-shaped. Haven't even seen any lizards!"

He grasped the end of the loose cable with the forceps, and started guiding it deeper into his abdomen. There was a bundle of wires deep in there that it needed to join up with, follow the path up through his guts to a power supply. He'd be working mostly blind there, but he knew how all the parts fit together. It'd be fine.

"Of course, maybe some of them are new strains, but what am I supposed to do with that? Their organs will look almost exactly the same as all the rest, and I can't read their genomes here, not unless there's a sequencer hiding somewhere here. I don't suppose you have one of those, do you?" He glanced up at this Mourningstar whatsit.

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[open] Hello, world!

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Dealer's choice

oh god, uh. 2-4, take your pick!

4 it is! ^_^

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