Vengeance Burbling Thanks and Brine Providing Lovely Exposition/ Off to get Ceneric/ Sine's somewhere round the corner, somewhere, probably

"Right away, then! The sooner the better. We'll be back in no time, Etch. Maybe even no time actually if I can work that silly machine right," Cauren replied, and got up half closing her eyes. "I should have done this a long time ago."

Leading Ko on back to and within the TARDIS, Cauren tapped the safebubble she'd mentioned Sine to be in and pondered. It would have fit comfortably in the other's hand, let alone in the giant's. "We'll get her out of that musty thing when he's safe back with us, I rather think. She might rethink her stance on prisons a bit. I'm not sure."

"It also opens after seventy two hours on its own, so, ah, we have a time limit to figure this all out, but I think I understand how to go about it if I can just get the coordinates to where he is."

The bauble looked quite like the prison orbs that the redhead had used to imprison an Alruthine and the Yonaka, save that "don't panic" and various medical symbols were written all about it, as well as some actual device tech that would be incomprehensible to the common Cauren. Setting it aside, she looked at the bizarre light and then the glyphs and charts and consoles. "I'll get this up again. You might have a better time looking around than at this odd stuff."

"... never did understand why it bonded to..."

Setting about cranking, typing, and pressing buttons more like a desperate madwoman than a pilot, she made it whine and get aloft as she gestured vaguely to the warm stairs and plants growing throughout the piloting room and harrumped. "It changes."

Ko raised her eyebrows at the forest currently sprouting in the room, before peering down and into the red orb Sine was stuck in. She looked back to Cauren with a small frown, gesturing down at it. "I hate to say it, Cauren, but Sine might not take this lying down. I guess if we can't get her off of there until then, we're still going to get this done... But when we tell this story later, You can put the blame on me, for your own sake."

Ko shrugged and crossed her arms. "Either way and no matter what, I'm not leaving Ceneric out on some rock. Anything else is secondary to that objective, at the moment."

She wasn't actually sure how Cauren was operating the police box that folded time; only that it looked exhausting. Non made a noise like a weary growl in her head, and she turned to look at the hilt over her shoulder.

What is it? 

This machine. I do not like it, and it does not like me.

Ko snorted and ducked as a sparrow flew out of the woods around Cauren, watching her work with a small smile.

"There's a manual release in there, technically. I must admit I'm a little surprised if she actually is still in there. I made her do it for her own good, but," the distracted girl waved a spare tendril, "like I said earlier, she -is- still Sine. I half expect she's in the bowels of the ship looking for something to take down a Balrog with, not in the ball at all."

She looked around and shrugged sheepishly. "Well! Should we have a walk about while it gets underway?"

"Huh. Sparrows. I had no idea... maybe there's squirrels here, too. Why is the console beeping? -oh. There's something organic coming at high speed."

With a very worried yap, a blur flung itself on the pregnant woman, and all but buried in a sea of white fur and big blue eyes, Cauren gave a startled chuckle and an "oh, no."

Fluff wagged her tail and made a scolding noise as if to admonish the giant for having fought without her before trotting over to sniff Ko's leg and look at her with interest. The huge Alaskan Husky barked once, albeit in a friendly manner, and her tail swept pinecones into walls at a frantic pace. "She says hello, I think," Cauren added, perhaps redundantly.

"Bonjour, badi." Ko grinned, rubbing Fluff's flank and scratching behind the ears. "Comment allez-vous? Huh?"

She looked up at Cauren and gave her a thumb's up before patting Fluff one more time. "Very well, then. We'll focus on getting your brother back and worry about the rest later. At least we won't have to fight our way in, unless I miss my guess."

She looked around the interior with interest, putting her hands on her hips and gazing all around. "A walk would be a good idea. This machine seems impressive to me, and I wouldn't mind seeing how it works. Does it always have that low hum?" Ko asked, tilting her head and looking deeper into the Tardis.

Fluff panted and gave another solitary bark at the question before trotting for the stairs with a backwards glance at the pair.

"Generally it does make that hum unless it's... well, talking is the wrong word for it," Cauren nodded, then considered. "Well, no. It is talking, but it's speech without words or numbers. It's a little bit like Non, I suppose, when you talk to her. Except her thoughts are words, when we hear them. .........."

"It's alive," she blurted. "It's a machine, but it's alive. It grew. It grows."

"It hasn't decided on a gender and Sine said I was silly for trying to talk it into one," she finished sheepishly. "I think its going to be a she, but I'm probably biased."

"Ahh... mm. This is one of the engine rooms. I can't make heads or tails of it, but it tells me how to work with it anyway when Sine or Carol can't figure something out. They're really a lot better with it. Over here is the shielding generator matrix. Apparently the one the Doctor has warded off demons and somesuch...? I don't... uhm... I have yet to learn much. There's a lot of cargo rooms and some very strange ones that come and go."

She paused in a medical bay. "It wouldn't ever -make- one of these when I was requesting it. :l Stubborn thing."

Beakers and basins rounded out tables with odd monitoring equipment and diagnostic devices, set around patient tables and medical tools. "Normally there's a galley here. Things move around."

Fluff made a face and tugged at her sleeve. "No, not pillow room again, girl. Do you think it'd make an exercise one for Ko?"

"I see... So this is far more advanced than just some machine, isn't it? No wonder you say it's alive." She said appreciatively, looking into the workout room formed in front of her eyes. "I suppose we'll find your little brother in no time with something like her aiding us, at least."

"How long do you think that will take, in any case? If need be I can pay for and secure a hotel room for him, but what was the plan once we extracted him?" She asked, letting Fluff go ahead of her and into another hallway. She didn't know what the things on the side did, but she doubted they were nothing but decorations. Turning around, she eyed up Cauren before sighing.

"As well, if this will take awhile, I want to talk to you about something. A few months ago, there was... Something happened on a mission, and I wasn't ready for it. I wanted to wait to discuss it with you. I'd prefer to put it off so I can enjoy the time I have left with you, but we do need to talk."

"I'm going to miss you, this year. I really am." Ko said, crossing her arms and looking away. She seemed troubled, it was heavy on her brow and her mouth.

"I'll listen, of course. I imagine it might be an hour or two. Sometimes it goes shorter if you already know where and when you're going, but it's still solving for that. What's on your mind?"

The white haired girl sat heavily in a corner and curled up her knees against her very present belly, propping her chin on them and looking over.

Ko sat down next to her loosely, one hand on her knee. She smiled at Cauren and thought about how to begin. Eventually she folded her hands and started talking to the floor.

"It was supposed to be a normal job. Etch and I wanted to buy a new water pump for the back of her store, so we looked up one that seemed simple enough. It was some rock named Belgin, the usual "there are monsters coming from underground, we need someone to clear 'em out." Type stuff. Scrub work, but it paid well, and it would be easy. Or so we thought, anyway."

"Etch and I went in with a security team each. It didn't take long for the things to find us; they were people, once, but they'd been underground so long they'd gone savage and feral. Horrible, pale things with no eyes, dropping down from the ceiling... It was blade work and it was bloody, yet there was no real danger."

"Up until we hit the nest, that was how things went, but when we got there it went to hell. There was hundreds out them, pouring out of tunnels and bolt holes from every angle. I was fighting for my life in minutes. Too many of the team died for us to keep going, so we retreated and hooked up with Etch. She teleported us all to a clear part of the tunnels... And then we got lost."

"We wandered down there for hours, until we found the Spires. I don't know what they were really called, but they were these huge basalt rock chunks that stretched up so high you couldn't see their tops in the dark... And they were covered with writing, writing that gave everyone else a headache..."

Ko stood up and crossed her arms again. She took a deep breath and looked down at Cauren. Her eyes were sad.

"This next part gets bad, I want to warn you."

"I appreciate the warning," Cauren nodded mildly, despite her own many experiences in bad things and her girlfriend's love of fictions depicting such matters. "But first, I'm very sorry to hear about the deaths of your compatriots. Did you know any of them well, Ko? Is there anything we can do in memorium?"

"I'm listening, when you're ready. Do you need a drink?"

"I talked to most of them leading up to the actual mission, and they weren't bad people. Just bodies caught in a crossfire they shouldn't have been. The outsource company paid extra to their families, but..." Ko sighed and shook her head. "Thank you, but no. I'll be fine."

"These... Figures came out of the spires. They were shaped like people, but there was nothing human about them. They were made of light that writhed like worms, and they screamed in voices like glass scraping together. One of them pointed at Etch and she went flying to the far wall, she hit hard enough to mess up a leg."

"The men were dying, and I was screaming, because my center was pulsing. Remember when I told you about those? They whipcracked out of me and through me until I hit my knees. It was just like the fight against Yagren- black lines traced my armor, and Nothingness spread over me."

"But then, it changed." She swallowed, and hugged herself. "My armor grew denser, like some kind of lodestone but of plate, and Non became something else as well. Closer to it's true form. It was like a long, Blunt, heavy longsword. I think my eyes were glowing..."

"It was heavy, Cauren. It was so, so heavy that it hurt. If I had any skin and bones left but my torso, it would've killed me. There were these fields around me, I could see them effecting the dust and loose stones, flinging them about in a chain of order and gravity. I felt so, so exalted. Like someone in the grip of a mania. Everything I did felt so weighted, but so clear, and sharp."

"I killed them all. I could barely swing Non, and took a hundred wounds, but I killed every last one of them. When I was done I shattered the spires and somehow... Ended them. Ended them forever. I don't know how I know that, but I do."

Ko buried her face in her hands and ran them through her hair. "All the armor smoked and crackled off of me, and Non shattered down to what it is the rest of the time. I crawled over to Etch and woke her up, and she got us out of there. I was in and out of consciousness for a month, and I only got out of bed for the last time two weeks ago."

"I think... I changed my fate last year, Cauren, but I still have a purpose beyond this one, and my time is running out. Soon I won't be here anymore, or around anymore, and I'm worried." Ko seemed surprised she'd admitted it, but continued anyway. "I'm afraid for the future. I'm afraid something bad is coming, and I won't be able to stop it."

Ko hung her head and smiled sadly at Cauren. "I just don't want to lose all this. I don't want to lose any of it before I have to. Does that make me foolish?"

"No."

The word was quiet, and laden with more than a little pain at the terrible but inevitable knowledge that her friend had a more definite Doom than most, but very firm all the same for that. "No, Ko, it isn't foolish. Wanting to cherish something before it's gone is part of being alive. I have that on fairly good authority."

"I still hope we can find a way to help you, but if it can't be, then I would rather you be able to face that end and know that you lived and you loved it while you did," she teared up a fair bit and hid her face in her elbow. She strained to crack a comforting smile and a joke despite the shake to her shoulders and the creaking of the wall she leaned on as the pressure grew from the lean. "-I'm- probably a sentimental fool, granted, you might not be getting the best answer."

"There's a lot of tragedies set in fighting one's fate or meddling in someone else's, but taking contentment and joy on the way... the only thing you have to lose is something you were going to anyway, right?"