Tycross - creature alliance territory

The whole shuttle was placed upon a enclosure gaurded by a swarm pool of parasites. The highest security of them all. Yet still the couple stayed inside the shuttle as it were placed.

It the meantime of waiting for events, this place as a visitor hall. It is dedicated to the lives this place was. There seems a sort of wish by all to recount a time when things were divided. A time when cats and dogs spoke different harmony and there weren't invaders from space opening walking our homes. When resources was plentiful and the world was a closed market system. My recent nosing in her scrapbooks has (sadly to admitted) sparked my own curiosity of what it was like. Additionally the more I learn the more I see of this current times tragic pathing to repeat history.

I know my place. To watch them from the sides. The further my grandfather looses truth in his sister, the closer my timeline occurs. Until the snake that wedges between them has to died, I must sit back helpless to the heartache. There was a way to push past all this issue but it meant violation of my own crystal. My mind added that I would be lost to the hoard of the hive. It meant access to the stones inside my grandparents. It makes for a great last case scenario. A sacrifice far exceeded my sanity. As the last light of the day is drawing, reading untainted resources of current time is of highest value when I return to my timeline. The bias of humans at its pen sharp finest - humans in my time are useless. Never reaching the potential that folks like Mrs Nick is. They really are pets to machine by then.

The late evening of when this supposed witching hour begins was where I put the current reading materials down, stomping my last cigarette and listened to the air. Baring the fuss of the residents coming out for the show too. It is just enough to hear them arguing in the shuttle. The sudden loud thud of utter silence. The whinging of creatures around me with tails between legs. That thud wasn't a inside noise, it was the landing of something on top of the craft.

She became too large to fit inside the shuttle, making do by laying across the top and peering from the side. Her ear drop in seeing the two in there, a hand that wants to reach to them was hung to the side. She simple didn't speak at all, lifting to coil on the top.

A heated discussion echoed inside instead. She posed from time to time. So there was input by her but it's through a AR chat. This outcome isn't a happy one. She peers to the sky and stands with leaving. The very sorrow dripping off her.

"So what now?" Mulberry has caught me. I lite a new cigarette since skulking around was noticed.

"The ruined library had nothing useful. Any old cases or boxes owned by them were worn or had any marks erased. The bodies the two crafted underground had nothing significant. The shuttle isn't what the governor wants but it will location to someplace next. He wants that next place." I muttered in checking my notes, "The core of the hive is the key to unlocking it too. No one knows where it's located." I peer in how she was returning with a file. Dropping into into the shuttle and her leave instantly upon dropping the item off.

"She knows. She just doesn't want to be the one to go." Mulberry added, "So you reported all that?"

"No. There is high stakes in this. I had to steal this body to be here." I had finished the cigarette completely, stomping it out and collected the bud, "This was a shell of a spy."

"Your a different type of spy." Mulberry catching up and thinking about it, "Where is that quartz watch?"

"I am the watch." I see she stayed in a distance watching the two. For sure those papers are being gone through. Likely more witch marks with answers. They burned them, a light started from within. The whole shuttle was disappearing, flowing like a cloud. Lifted the two off the rock enclosure, no traces left.

"So what stops you from interacting?"

"The moment I do, someone is sent to stop me. There has to be the right moment." I see that I am watched, the couple coming forwards, "When I am done. I hope I return to something better."

"Both of you make great head to toss about." Jack tone was not his normal. He trying to play down his actual mood. His wife pull a shoulder of his to back him away from us. Maybe he meant that violently. He was quick to go for a punch at my face, the code unable to harm human flesh.

"So do you plan on going there or not?" I asked indifferent with the fist at my eyes. He was shivering mad.

"It was all about translation to find something. Even without knowing it was a language. There seems a sort of mapping about it. As for the detective, his been chasing witch marks for a location for something." Mulberry backing me for now.

"We have no means of doing anything when we get there."

"Says the two with the heart of the hivemind. Sheesh. I am going ger murder for this later." I had to lite another cigarette, "You have a snake to kill. It's been following you. It not going to waste time when it know your the key to the lock."

"Why do you know?" His wife has the fear thing covered. I just about nearly lost the human I am stealing from for a moment.

"If he wasn't on our side. I would think he would be trying harder to see the runes for himself. Clearly some events of now are worth going back for." Mulberry sighed, "Given it has to be about you three. It would be a significant change to the future." I let this human do as he needs to get some composure. The pair share a moment of some private conversation. Jack expression returns back to his renounced poker face, the principal of how machines wish to be in my time. That choose to when have emotions or not.

"Not that we trust of believe you. You have changed since the wedding. The you before us isn't the man that tried to kill my wedding guests. Nor do I feel obligated to help any accused debt from those replacements." The arms I have held at my side loosely and the leg I gave the least weight on, "So for the moment, even taking your words lightly. You aren't wrong. Yes the core is with us. We now have the location unlike you. Yet what is really the point of you risking everything to tell us this?"

"Your sister wasn't wrong about war extending beyond the stars. By then, humans are not as handy as they are some of now. The knowledge that humanity held best from us was lost to the hivemind. Living day to day is fine. And the atmosphere will be stripped away at some point once to many resources of this planet are stolen. All that keeps this place relatively important is the dark market trade post and what few government systems joined together as a planet as a whole. There will be more foreigners then natives. Starving all that could have been." I square them both, "I came to change things in a better negotiation for the future. Even if is at the cost of my life."

"War still happened?" His wife frowns.

"It doesn't have to. The war was fought over what you find next. Fallen to this person's boss... war does happen."

"Left to us."

"Execute the snake. That can guarantee no war with the Mantis empire. From there, who you make your other alliances with paves what maybe the next war. For the item you find is a myth. Rumours long ago stated it saved or brought back lost planets from stripped atmospheres. Weaponized it would eat whole suns. The weapon a Commander wants to make another stone. These stones are what remains of condensed life. Who knows what he wants it for."

"His ship is the last of his race. Desperate enough. He do anything for the cores. He and the mantis aren't allies due to it." She mutters on, "So fine. Your time isn't nice. So you came back to steal it? Take the artefact?"

"To learn to make one. Given the Commander destroys this one. The snake is the thing that been on this earth longer then him. A thing you seem to had met a few times before."

"It likely be the plague doctor. He has been after my sister whole body for a while. I do start to see why." Jack having a angered expression so slightly.

"She has the most humanity I had ever seen since being here." I felt it my part to comment, "A strange human who doesn't act like the rest. But the most human in her actions. Protective of the weaker of her. Does her best to stay within a job she hates most. Brought signal to the surface when no one could think of how. I wish she was around my time really. We need a thinker like her. Even if they are a hindrances as a help to the cause. The method of madness has the most surprising results."

"Whatever she is now... I doubt she is her."

"The woman as a brother complex and you doubt she is real. Dude. I would punch you if I could." I tut at the man.

"Why couldn't you punch me?" I sighed and posed for Mulberry to do the honours. He rolls into a punch as stops short.

"Did you think that maybe the person that created the bodies your in wanted you to give you something no other machines could?" I make my point, "Metal as you may on the outside. Inside are the crystal forms of life itself. With maybe even some extreme thinking, you might grow skin or something."

"You both lower the radiation around you to near normal levels. Like it is consumed as food." Mulberry added, "You both sleep, actually sleep. Not a machines way. You have sleep patterns that shares with human functions. You asked me the other week what I did differently with the coffee I brought to your office."

"They are right too. I noticed other things about us both. How more expressive we become when we don't keep ourselves in check." She holds her hand to her chest, "If given the right time and place. I think we could make life of our own." She was being serious too. Enough for Jack to take a snap twist to her.

"Indeed." The four us all jolted in the surprising head leaning down from a roof, "I gave you the last things I held to be human again. In giving them up, I hoped that you could have a future that I once had. I had my own children once. I spent holidays with them. There is a sense of pride in having your own." She may have been pointed weapons from the other three but I stand my ground with choosing to not, "I am glad you worked it out before having an accidental child. Those happen and never when you need one." She peers at me, "The longer you stay here Quartz... the more you loss you in the future. All that data collected would be wasted."

"So will you protect the artefact?"

"I will ate it." She stated and I look at her, "Because when I eat things. I make them I to something useful. Look what I had done when I ate the gemstones the mantis queen was fussed with. They couldn't stay in the engine compartment... it was growing strange plants. I couldn't risk strange plants killing my ecosystem here."

"So, what if it is to big to eat?"

"Silly child. I don't have to ate it alone." She pats me on the head, "The metal is for them." She meant the machines, "I will eat the meat and gemstones." She peers about me, "Do I have to eat you to send you back?"

I complete lost my ability the human in check and was swiftly knocked cold by Mulberry. In conclusion of my last account since this conversation, I had lost track of them. Not only the human I held was gone. I lost where I was in the mission I was send for to begin with.

I am uncertain of when in time and history I am. If I was sent back in a reaction of fear, then deactivated from lost energy. I would only be awakened now because I am reconnected to a source of energy... but I have not functions to evaluate my surroundings with. Locked within my quartz, in a state of paralysation and blindness. I will have pick survival over mission for now. To wait to take over a new host.

I hope that my knowledge can pass down to the world I lived in, years after the off world scavengers stripped this place and deemed it a backwater once again. Earth was looking to be a galaxy leader in the top belt council, there was potential. I hope my warning to them about the snake was just in time. For a better outcome, a better earth.