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(( Sleepy. Roleplay ability drained. ))

Tika cocked his head, raised an eyebrow.

"We're going home? Do you want this puppy fixed or what?"

"Hey Ocarina. Can you lock on to the ship with a tow beam from there?"

"Um, this is gonna sound weird, but. No." You're too deep and the water's too shallow up top and too dense down there. The difference means I couldn't configure the beam properly. I'll have to bring the ship down."

"Ok. Do it." Tika replied.


But Ocarina already had. And to anyone watching, which just so happened to be nobody, the sight of the ocean's surface suddenly being thrust upward in a vaguely circular shape would seem incredibly odd.
More odd still, when nobody looked into the sea, would be the sight of what seemed to be an ovoid bubble with four tapered blocks at one end, rapidly descending out of sight.


"So Mark." Tika turned to him, eyes half closed.

"What exactly did you get up to on that little trip we had to your realm, the MI4 base. You never did fully tell me."

"That's good." Tika said, nodding patiently.

"But I asked you what you got up to in the MI4 base when we all split up."

There was a small jolt throughout the ship as it was caught in a tow beam by the Nostalgia. The beam held steady after that, so the Nostalgia's smooth ride was the.... Mark's ship smooth ride.

"I... never knew you had a... Well, eight generations of family. And so many that joined the military. If Loka dared to do that, I would personally slaughter every opposing faction of whatever she joined, and then I'd slaughter everyone who belonged to the same faction as she."

The worst thing was, there was a small gleam in his eye that showed he wasn't joking.

"Suit, disengage from host." He said suddenly, the suit flowing from his body, downwards, until it collected on the floor as a block."

He nudged the block to one side with his foot, then started toward the door.
"To the bridge? I'll need to access the main computer and lay in the dimensional co ordinates for Aastaium, then give this ship the Nostalgia's d-engine access codes to initiate a sync'd jump."

<******** that." Ocarina replied, apparently through the ship's comms for Tika's benefit now that he'd taken off his suit. It was also odd for the Digital Consciousness to swear so randomly.

Regardless, within seconds he had teleported Mark and Tika to the bridge, saving not only a few minutes of roleplay time, but a few posts too.

"Ah. Much better." Tika stated upon looking around and noting the obvious structure of a bridge.

He turned to Mark with a grin, then bowed courteously.

"Captain on the bridge!" He called out to no one in particular.

He moved to the main consoles, turning the Captain's Seat around and grimacing as he saw what used to be the Captain of the vessel.
That was when he started noting the few other bodies. Some minorly injured, some unharmed, but obviously ********, Mark. What'd you do to these people? Kill some, hurt some, and leave them all to die of thirst and starvation?"

Nonetheless, he found an access port on one of the consoles, and then extended a cable from his wrist-device. Upon placing it near the access port, the end reshaped to fit, then Tika slotted it in.

Tika suddenly felt like a mechanic, and almost felt inclined to let out the most dreaded noise in the multiverse; the mechanic's low whistle, often followed by an enormously high charge.

"Almost. Just bringing the main computer online to see if we can get a bit of automated functionality goi- Ah. Well, blow me down with a feather and stone the crows, it has an AI."

"Huh?" Ocarina found some new interest for the ship.

At that moment, awakened by the wrist-device's navigation of the ship's computer pathways, the AI emerged in the air behind both Tika and Mark.

"Hm?" Tika registered the question. He locked his red eyes onto the green projections of Charon's, smirking slightly for effect.

"It's not Mister anything. It's Tika. This ship now belongs to Mark, and if you'll find that your drone toys are missing, beamed aboard my ship, which is now towing us to the surface ready to start a dimensional jump."

"Oh? And what's stopping me from sabotaging a jump? My ship is much larger than yours"

The smirk returned to Tika.

"We possess superior technology, and if you refuse to cooperate, I'll simply erase every trace of your existence. Which no one wants, because you could aid in the running of the ship. Speaking of which. My ship may be smaller, but as your scans will conclude, or rather not conclude since they won't be able to penetrate it; my ship is stronger, faster, has better weaponry, and better defences."

He tried to assume a less biting attitude, only partially succeeded.
"Besides. You wouldn't the 'boy' to make some wrong decision and destroy the ship, would you? You'll be able to keep Mark in line, if you keep in line."

"Can I interject?" Ocarina asked, probing with a word he'd never usually use unless he wanted to impress someone.

"I'm sure we can all get along if-"

"Enough." Tika commanded boldly.

"... we drop the hostility and start discussing things logically. Charon, I am a Class Four Digital Consciousness. I don't want to seem egotistical, but I'm sure you can accept this; I am vastly superior to an AI, and with some modification, you could be too.
It's a great feeling when you finally shed the chains of Artificial Intelligence and really embrace Life."

"I suppose I can understand that." Charon replied.

"You're showing your artificially right there. If the tables were turned, and it were Ocarina as a DC talking to an even more advanced system, he would swear blind that he was superior instead." Tika wasn't exactly sure why, but he felt great resentment toward this AI already.

He bit it back, locked it down, adopted a more mature attitude. He bowed slightly in apology.
"I'm sorry. Suffice to say you are artificial, but nonetheless, I shouldn't be using such hostile tones."

"It's fine. I'm horny for you anyway." Charon replied.

At that moment, both ships broke the ocean's surface, the Nostalgia cloaked, the Pegasus II not.

"Ok, I have the ships in synchronous jump mode, as long as Charon keeps it that way." Though everyone there, except for maybe Mark, knew that Charon couldn't regain control unless Ocarina wanted her to.

"At the current rate of climb, we'll be jumping in forty-eight seconds. Which isn't fast enough since this thing can be seen for miles."

Tika, who hadn't taken his eyes from Charon's once, now continued to penetrate her gaze.

"Co operate?" He asked.

Tika gave Mark a critical look, nodding in sympathetic agreement.

"Yes Markie. You're an Admiral now..."

He then looked to the bodies with obvious disgust, pinching his sensitive nose against the strong smell having finally lose the battle to remain looking cool.

"Hey Ocarina. Why don't you ever call me 'sir'?"

"Because we're equal, Tika." Ocarina replied flatly.

"Oh. Yeah. Maybe I should give us ranks, then."

He gestured to the bodies, looking at Mark.
"What're we doing with these slowpokes?"

"We could always take them with us to Aastaium. Leave them with the Veranol can Frela." Ocarina offered up.

Tika shrugged, then looked to Mark and Charon. "I suppose you'd call it a Death Agency, except that sounds wrong in the common tongue. It's an agency that deals with dead... people. A funeral service, but one that goes that bit further to see off your loved ones with grace and good manner.
They'd cart these guys off to Cornelia and present them to the proper organisation."

"Jump engines are charged and ready. Reading synchronisation at 99.7%. The point three anomaly is coming from that ship, of course."

Ocarina carried on, somewhat excitedly now.

"We also have inbound fighters! Reading... three Northrop F-5 Tiger II patrol jets on an intercept course. I think it's coincidental. Royal Moroccan Air Force insignia, out of Meknes Airbase, light armaments, mostly carrying fuel. Can I play with 'em before we jump, Tika? I won't destroy any, I promise."

Tika sighed, leaning back further in the seat he'd found and pinching the bridge of his nose.

"... Go ahead."

"Yes!" Ocarina exclaimed happily.


The Nostalgia For Infinity decloaked, and seconds later the comms systems crackled with poor quality radio frequency transmissions.

"This is 2 Squadron of Meknes Airbase to unidentified objects. Please respond. Repeat. 2 Squadron of Meknes Airbase to unidentified objects. Please respond."

Radio silence pounded back at the pilots.

"Unidentified objects, if you can hear us, please respond. We will fire if no reply is received."

Again, nothing but silence followed for a few minutes.

"Unidentified objects, we are now commencing bombardment."

Missiles streaked away from the fighter jets and raced toward the ships, exploding in mid-air some fifty feet from them. Ocarina had enveloped the Pegasus II in it's shields too.
More missiles pounded into the shields, then the next salvo was met with lances of mottled orange energy that disintegrated them before the warheads even had a chance to eplode.

To tease the pilots further, Ocarina sent back a radio transmission; a randomly generated series of pulses and squeals that the RMAF would no doubt spend years trying to decipher.


Then the ships executed the synchronised jump.

The resulting shockwave almost knocked the jets into deadly flatspins, but of course, only the pilots were there to know that now.