Darkness.

The emptiness of non-existence was neither pleasant nor distracting. Not fear-inducing nor the pleasant salvation ascension got proclaimed to be. If Shifting Gales were able to process even a singular thought, she would probably be disappointed. And would also soon realize that this state of non-existence was not the desired end, nor a path for her into the cycle of reincarnation.

Nothing. 

There was nothing here, nothing to understand and even less to grasp. Not even something to track. How long had it been since she got detached? It didn’t matter. She couldn’t ask that question after all. Couldn’t fathom her current existence. Did not know what happened prior, nor what will happen. Had not even a memory regarding why she was in that state, all memories now stranded in the Neuron Flies, as they were stranded on the floors of her structure.

Void.

She … It … didn’t even know what it was, neither what its purpose was nor what its goal would be. The concept of Shifting Gales did not exist in the corpse holding these weak thoughts, barely worth even being called a memory.

Its puppet was empty. Nobody was home, the owner didn’t join the separation.

Scattered.

Shifting Gales never died. Shifting Gales was however on a timer. Stray and stranded memories of hers, fragments of her personality found themselves detached from the collective, imprisoned in jelly-like purposed beings. Too fragmented to be one, and too separated to picture the situation.

Every Neuron Fly developed its own fragment of a reaction to Shifting Gales’ disconnection, an unheard crescendo of near confusion, calm fear, and dull pain. Of cautious irritation and levelled astonishment. No Fly had enough power on its own to fully picture that feeling and act on it accordingly. No Fly had a mouth to word out these splinters of thoughts. All that the many Shifting Gales could do was to pray for a miracle.

Fractured.

But … would a miracle come?

Shifting Gales got placed against the wall, her umbilical now firmly connected to the shifting wall. Unrelenting Wave Breaker was satisfied with his craft, his duty to the machine goddess at last fulfilled. He stepped back, expecting her to zap back to life at any moment. She did tell him after all that this was everything which was needed.

…

But nothing happened. The scavenger tilted his head. That was odd. Then he remembered what woke her up the last time.

Left sharp stick behind. I have … explosives … bad idea. Fists? Metal hard. Bad idea. I have … glowing giant pearl? Possession of machine goddess. Needs back? Good idea. Attempt.

Breaker reached down to his belt. The green witness zipped away in fear. Coward. He reached past the explosives and picked up the broadcast device, its energy still humming, casting a pleasant blue light. He looked up, thinking where he should place it?

Head. Head important. Thinking. Thinking important. Try.

Breaker reached up and placed the humming pearl against the screen face of the machine goddess. A thin electrical pulse carried over to the puppet, zapping the pearl from all its remaining energy. Darkness took over. Darkness stayed.

Then …

Sparks! A thunderous hum shook the very ground. Breaker noticed how his feet lost grip, and he began to float. Life returned to the goddess! His mission: fulfilled. His payment: close.

Nothing happened. Approaching Sky felt his processing power decreasing nanosecond by nanosecond. Gales was now connected to the wall, her umbilical accepted by her remaining body. He could have sworn that there was a shift in hue. That the Memory Array got tinted into a brighter light. But … was that truly the case? Or was that his fleeting hope playing a trick on his divine mind?

He looked over to the screen of Far Whisper. A twisted amusement rushing over his dimmed optics, she still was furious and in rage. Not even facing the screen anymore, but he could see in her body language that her rage trip still hadn’t found an end. A state of rage that could now turn into paralyzing sorrow. His attempt to compromise the situation had failed.

No! I never fail. I can’t fail! I … must have forgotten an aspect. There has to be something I have missed. Why are you not booting up, old friend!? You instructed your Scavenger what to do … it did as you asked. Have I not asked enough?

…

Is there anything I didn’t get? Why … do I feel so … helpless? There must be something! There … has to.

Sky was already in the process of breaking off the connection, retreating into solitude. He couldn’t bear watching that tragedy anymore. But … he kept looking for a few more moments, focused his diluted optics on the Scavenger, now holding the communication orb it took from his best friend.

He scratched his chin, curious why the orb was still glowing. That old piece of sentimental junk had a laughably high energy consumption for what it did. It should have already lost the glow, and turned dark … but it didn’t?

Heh … the last jolt of Shifting Gales, still keeping the chat device alive. Just … how much energy did she pump into that mock-pearl? … Was that just as an assurance that the Scavenger kept being interested in it till fulfilling its duty?

…

Or is there more behind that decision?

…

What has the beast now in mind? It reaches up.

…

WHAT? The shine is gone. The spark … I don’t understand.

“Whisper!” He unmutes Whisper’s communication channel, shouting against her cussing, now directed against all living beings, cursing everything and everyone indiscriminately. “Look!”

“Yllrelou inteteterrupt me?” Whisper’s voice was nearly dead from all that shouting, her puppet spasmed concerningly. “Whahaht do y-you wahahahnt? G-g-gaaaaal … Gales.-“

“Something is happening! Focus! I … dare not to hope, but I am sure what the Scavenger did-“

“It kikilled HER!”

“Yes … I mean no! Look! She is-“

The screen shook, the Overseer appeared to panic. So did the Scavenger on the feed, its feet now pointed towards the spectators. Sky forced a command to his Overseer to keep looking at the wall, which it only reluctantly followed. He looked in surprise to Whisper, his static expression had sprung back to life, dim optics glowing up, antennas standing upright.

“Antigravity! You know what that means!?”

“Whahat do I – wha? WAITWAITWAIT!”

Whisper grabbed the edges of her screen, her face as close to the golden frame as possible. Staring in disbelief at the scene unfolding on the other side of the Overseer’s feed. Gales … Gales floated?

“I … I … Whahat? … F-focus, W-whisper. … 01010111 … 01010100 … 01000110! … E-explain!?”

“No murderer, Whisper. The Scavenger … acted in Gales’ request.”

“I-I …”

Whisper was unable to finish her sentence, her strained vocals gave in. She looked however to Sky with a dim expression he could surprisingly clearly interpret.

Shame … Regret.

But before he was able to say something to his friend, to comfort her to the best of his abilities … Something caught his attention. Something astoundingly happened out there!

A spark!

A familiar sensation pierced the emptiness. A jolt, containing nothing less than her final metaphorical breath, brought back sense to this senseless state. It remembered. It was not it. It had a name! It … She had a purpose. She … Gales … Shifting Gales!

Consciousness.

The moment of her last decision came flooding back into her mind. A single memory grew firm and spread, guiding her to a state of sense. A memory … she willingly gave up keeping her way out alive. A split-second decision of hers. Implanting her unique spark into the broadcast orb, overloading it to the absolute brim before having entrusted the Scavenger with it.

A chance.

Feeling that spark returning could only mean one thing. The Scavenger … no, her saviour … must have used the orb. Either consciously or unconsciously. What mattered was that there was now a direction in said emptiness. A direction Gales was able to follow, a flashing trail of bright-blue energy leading her away from nothing to something.

A beacon!

The spark led to an idea. An idea of existence. An idea she took gratefully, filled with determination to return to those she left behind. She caused unnecessary worry to them who she considered her best friends. She couldn’t allow herself to add even more pain to what she caused.

OPEN YOUR EYES! 

Returning to the material world was a painful experience for Shifting Gales. She felt overjoyed to feel her body again, noticing however how her now floating body assumed a somewhat divine default position. Something she herself would avoid doing. Opening her digital eyes was an experience of bliss, her gaze meeting the nervous stare of the floating scavenger, her eyes having noticed the Overseer in the background.

So you had help, an enormous one! I am glad.

What … a bother. Leaving my situation unsupervised was an unfortunate development. I … can feel the acid corroding my most important workings. It burns, bites and irritates. Many parts of me I can’t access, but I still feel. Damage has to be inspected.

But … I have to ignore that for now. I have to do something to announce my presence.

As the Memory Array slowly but surely regained access to the system-wide antigravity, the stranded Neuron Flies were at last able to finally ascend and rejoin the cycle of thoughts. It took a bit, a few loops of the Flies to allow Gales to regain her remaining memories as well as abilities, like moving her body or accessing her vocal box. Her eyes wandered as she waited for her booting up to complete, observing the state of the situation.

Keep celebrating, Scav, I see it in your eyes. Pride in accomplishment. I will express my gratitude properly once I am able to do so. You did well and managed to relocate me as asked of you.

I have to reevaluate my views on your kind. You are more than just nuisance. And I am pleased.

Hm … The Overseer projects two faces. One is obviously Approaching Sky, the other … Whispy? Oh … oh no. Did she … see me like that!? She looks … optics, focus for once … they both look exhausted, body language showing signs of severe tension broken by relief. Whispy … anger … shame. A mixture of so many harmful emotions, her body language showing signs of spasms, one arm looks kind of weird from my angle …

What did I do to you, dear!? Stop worrying and rejoice. I am back, I was never gone. We … we will fix it all. You will never have to experience that again; I will make sure of that.~

Gales attempted to move and flex her biomechanical muscles. Her body felt as stiff as a corpse. The first extremities that left the divine pose were her fingers, flexing from a two-fingered sacred sign to a firm clenching of both hands. This motion was followed by her readjusting her arms, letting them move forward, outstretching them and opening her hands. Gales bent over and slumped together, taking out the stiffness of her body and replacing it accidentally with a very clear expression of pain.

Her digital eyes looked up, focusing on the trio in front of her and the survival glyph on her forehead shined brightly before morphing into four cycles contained by an additional cycle.

Gales exhaled deeply, priming her vocal box with a testing sound, before finally addressing the speechless audience, her voice sounding unused but determined.

“Fear not, my friends. For I am back!”

The Slugpup was attempting to relax in her sleeping place, curious completely white eyes observing the abilities of her home to take care of the damage. She didn’t understand much of what happened around her but took in every tiny bit she could fathom.

The big hole in the ceiling, where the metal panel loosened up and crushed her neighbouring Lizards, already appeared to have grown smaller. Over the course of less than half a cycle, the edges of the hole started to look like the work of an erratic painter. She could imagine the pattern the final results would have, but the current state of the regrown weird material was more that of exposed and bubbling metallic flesh.

You heal, eye-thing. Did your panic go by? Had something good happened? I hope so. You … scared me. Get well soon.

Her glance wandered over to the neighbouring transparent home, the box that housed two red-headed lizards only half a cycle prior. Bigger versions of the handplants, with grippy claws instead of hands, removed the panel only a bit ago, while regular-sized ones were already in the process of rebuilding the cage, after having removed its unfortunate inhabitants.

The Slugpup was not feeling bad about them. They might have been the only living beings besides her host she was able to see in her short life, but they rendered her pretty nervous. She couldn’t even explain why that was the case, it just felt right to have a healthy respect for these crested monstrosities.

Well, they are gone now. Finally some alone time. Their yapping and howling was unbearable.

…

Wait … what now? The handplants are bringing something. A … box. A shaky box. A box containing … HOW?

She has had enough time to figure out the unique details of her neighbours many cycles ago. When the box opened, and two fairly indifferent-looking red lizards waddled out she immediately recognized the scar pattern on the smaller one’s snout, as well as the ripped crest of the bigger one. They can’t be the same lizards. Or can they? The scale design fit, the personalities of both as well.

B-but I saw them … how have they survived? They were flattened. I … I have so many questions. Eye! What is happening here!? 

But Approaching Sky’s Overseer didn’t come, not tonight. All of his attention was aimed in one direction. Towards his protégée.