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The Sorceress of the Stars - An original story by Spin Attaxx


Spin Attaxx

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So I've decided to write up my own original story after playing with the idea for a few weeks. This is the story I plan to use for a video game idea. I don't know what to call it, though, so this is currently untitled.

 

EDIT: Here's a prologue to make things feel a bit less jarring considering setting shifts:

 


Magic is false, or so says science.

The concept of magic is one that has been consistently challenged throughout time. Across an ever-expanding void of nothing, with the odd star or two put in to liven things up, life exists, potters around for a period of time, then fails to continue existing. It is during this intermediate period between life and death that "civilisation" is formed, and with it, concepts. While each civilisation has its own ideas that are either unique, or at least slightly different from one another, there are three concepts that are universal constants - science, religion and magic. They, like most all ideas and concepts, never get on with each other. Religion is based on belief in the unproven, and science is based on belief in the proven. Though the two are almost always at each other's necks, insulting the other's mother and demanding they take back what they said about their own mother, they find a common enemy in the concept of magic, which they have no idea what it is. As a result, science declares it "the fool's science", with innumerable inaccuracies behind it, and religion declares it "an unholy abomination never meant for this world".

Though once the three consistently warred against each other, magic has almost entirely vanished from the picture, and is now merely regarded as a hypothetical impossibility. This is, of course, nothing to be ashamed of, since magic has effectively ceased to exist. What neither two know is that this is due to the actions of an utter catastrophe - one that was ironically brought about through magic itself, and one that wiped the force out from the universe, seemingly forever.

This is, however, not the story of that catastrophe, nor of the constant bickering between magic, science and religion. It is, in fact, the story of the aftermath of that catastrophe, and how it lead to events transpiring that would have consequences on the universe, starting with two planets. One, an infamous landmark on the galactic map, known throughout most of the cosmos; the other, an obscure speck on top of two obscure specks. It is on this planet that the events first began to unfold, the birthplace of the three individuals who would be the catalysts for the events. The first one was a young, female humanoid. The second, another humanoid, albeit male and older. The third was unique in that it wasn't a humanoid at all - it wasn't even descended from apes like the other two. It is, however, with this one that the events start with.

And they begin with it booting up.

 

Here's Chapter 1. Sorry it's a bit slow/rubbish/long winded, it's mainly introducing the three main protagonists.

 

>running startup scripts_100%

>activating camera functions_100%

The newly made service robot went from seeing these words to a black, dark room lit by an assortment of old fashioned machines. Odd cuboids gave off colourful, circular pulses of light, changing at certain intervals: red, then blue, then green, then purple, then back to red. Large hose-like tubes and pipes led from these machines into a small cylindrical shape, which contained all sorts of monitors, pipes and circuitry encased in a large glass dome. With barely two seconds to fully download what it saw into its RAM cards, another foreign sight jumped into its line of vision.

This foreign sight was a fairly unforeign sight to you or me or the man on the street, but at the same time it was a sight that made you want to keep your distance at first. It was a man, in his early-to-mid sixties, with a thin body, grey hair, slightly long grey moustache and a small grey beard on his chin. For a man of his age, he had few, if any, signs of age other than his hair. He dressed close to your textbook scientist - white labcoat, brown trousers, black shoes and red tie - but his glasses were the most unsettling thing about him. They masked his eyes behind a layer of grey, and as eyes are believed to be the window to the soul among many, the glasses gave an air of mystery and unpredictability to him.

Standing in front of his new mechanoid, he examined it with the keen interest of a child. It was a fairly tall white robot, going up to his shoulders. A quarter of the height was by a transparant dome, containing its "brain" of moniters and wires. Its body was cylindrical, with no head and the red camera lens taking up the top third of it. The body's midsection had a big red stripe around it. It had a small door below the "eye", and around it were six slots - containing  a hose, a frying pan, a dustpan, a brush, a duster and an arm similar to a toy grabbing arm. At its base were four wheels - this is how the robot would move.

"Can you see me?" said the grey haired man eagerly. The robot gave no response.
"Are you alive?"
Still nothing.
"I am Stuart Powell, can you say that?"
It didn't.
"Oh lord, what am I thinking, of COURSE you can't respond - I didn't give you any speech synthesisers! I know, here, grab that piece of paper!"
As he said this, he pointed towards a table with an A4 page corner poking off the edge. The robot's microphone picked up his request of "grab that piece of paper" and trundled along to the coordinates of where his finger was pointing. Upon arrival, it telescopically extended its arm and utilised the thin angled "claw" on it to grip it.
"Yes!" exclaimed Stuart, fist pumped in the air and eyebrows in a triumphant pose, "I've made a household robot that doesn't suck!"

 

As this was going on, two floors above the retro-looking world of Stuart and his new machine, his granddaughter, Jessica, was getting up out of bed. Many pop culture addicts will note how mad scientists often have beautiful daughters, and this rule extended to granddaughters in her case (though she never paid much attention to this herself). Her somewhat pale face stood out among her shoulder-length straight black hair, her mouth was a small frown and her eyes were blue. Continuing the belief of eyes being the window to the soul, looking into her eyes would indicate a soul filled with... well, not so much depression, but rather weariness. She always felt that the world was a giant asylum and she the only sane inmate, and living with a man like her granddad did not douse this belief. Next to her, a little red-breasted robin ruffled his feathers.
"Sigh... morning, Robinson."
"Sleep well, Jess?"
"No. Not with that din going on downstairs..."

Now, robins speaking perfect English are typically seen as impossible, but Robinson disproved that belief. Granted, he only ever did it to Jessica - not because he wanted it that way, but rather he rarely got the chance to speak to others, and when he did something else was always on his mind. He was with Jessica since she was a small infant - he just flew to her and refused to go away. Now she was sixteen years old and he was still the only friend she had. She never was much of a person who goes out and makes friends; she instead preferred to stay inside her room, away from the madness, away from the toiling insanity. Jessica went behind a screen for a few minutes, then re-emerged in her usual outfit. She was a rather shy person who HATED exposing any skin beyond her hands, neck and head and her outfit reflected this - a blue knee-length skirt, brown belt with gold buckle, jet black opaque tights, orange knee high boots (with a unique custom-made fastening system) and a green hoodie (with black long-sleeved shirt underneath).

 

"Eyup, someone's coming here," Robinson told Jessica as she straightened her hair. Sure enough, with an invisible giant grin on his face, Stuart came in.
This is gonna suck, she thought to herself.
"You won't believe what I've just made last night!" exclaimed her granddad enthusiastically.
With a hint of sarcasm in her voice, she replied, "Let me guess - something that does one single mundane task that any human being can do?"
"No, even better! Something that does SEVERAL mundane tasks that any human being can do!"
"Oh joy of joys. Let's see it so you can leave quicker."
In wheeled the robot. Its soulless black camera eye downloaded this new area into its RAM, not caring (not that it could) that Jessica was indifferent to it.
"Does it have a name?" she asked.
"No, er, never thought about that, er... maybe... Domestic Service... D.S.R... no... um... Dave."
"Dave?"
"Yes, Dave."
"OK, is it alright if you and Mr. My-Name-Was-Totally-Not-Made-Up-On-The-Spot go and do whatever now?"
"Sure. Oh, and can you pop down to London and get these things please?" Stuart popped in as he handed a list into the despondent girl's lap. "I doubt Dave's wheels would handle the elements well."
Jessica proceeded to immediately get up, leave the house and go to these places, Robinson following behind her. Any excuse to get away from the inevitable madness that will surely follow with this Dave tat, she thought.

 

Feedback and reviews would be much appreciated. Thanks for reading this (or not... if so then why are you here >:U)!

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  • 1 month later...

So here's Chapter 2:

 

Half an hour after this, Stuart was back in the basement that resembled what a person in the 1970's thought today in 2013 would've looked like.


"Dave, identify creator."
A monotone, electronic voice replied in a neutral manner, "Creator: Stuart Powell".
"Function. Identify."
"Function: Complete household tasks upon orders from creator or 'Jessica'."
Good, the microphone, speech synthesisers and extra A.I. seem to work perfectly, thought Stuart. Leading the robot out of the cellar and into the kitchen, he took an egg out from his pocket.
"Now fry this egg."
Dave extended its arm and grabbed the egg from Stuart's hand. A frying pan flipped out from one of the slots on its midsection and (using precise joints hidden in the arm's segments) cracked the egg open into it. Small heat generators within the frying pan proceeded to raise the temperature of the metal and cook the egg white and yolk until they were fried. Stuart, doing something one should probably never do with a recently fried egg, picked it straight from the frying pan, ate it whole and it was good.
Throughout the afternoon, all of Dave's capabilities from watering plants to sweeping up dust to keeping drinks cold were tried out and proven to be successful. Stuart was pleased that this was the case and mentally cheered to an imaginary audience.

 

************

 

At this exact moment, several miles away in London, Jessica mentally shouted to the planet that she was tired and that she needed to be left alone. This isn't to say she had a bad day - the weather was cloudy, the sun had buggered off to Burma for the week and it was cold, snowy and dark. She vastly preferred this weather to hot, sunny days - she had extreme intolerance for heat, and even though it made her even hotter on those days she still wore her usual boots and tights then because she also hated summer attire and would throttle the idea of baring any skin at all. No, the reason... the THREE reasons... why she was tired were thus:

1. She had been walking around London for all afternoon.

2. She was carrying a lot of bags which sapped her somewhat weedy arms of energy.

3. She was now being bothered by a girl she knew who took utter joy in teasing her about her appearance (in particular her lack of chest).

"Hey, been a while, Jess! I see you're struggling to hold those bags. Is that plain green hoodie you always wear weighing you down?"
Jessica stayed silent. Stay quiet, she told herself, and maybe for once in her life she'll decide to bug someone else.
"Y'know, one night, I was watching this soccer game on the TV, when this commercial popped up showing how people wearing certain colors can affect...."
Oh lord. Another passive-aggressive tangent meant to belittle her favourite outfit. What more did she expect from Cassidy?
"...of course, as a fashion designer in-the-making, I should know these things. And someday, my designs are going to be on display across every high street, in every shop window, even (dare I dream?) on the signs at Times Square!"
Big dreamer, Jessica thought. Of course, she herself was hardly better - she dreamed of making very popular creations too, albeit games instead of dresses.
"Meanwhile, you'll be wasting your life helping your sad, old senile madman to - I dunno, make a-"
If Cassidy said anything else, Jessica didn't hear it. That did her in - true, she may not think highly of her grandfather at times, but he was still the closest thing she still had to a father, and calling him a senile madman? No. That bitch was going to get it.

Turning around, Jessica grabbed Cassidy's jacket and jerked her towards her.
"Get this straight, you annoying prick," she growled with utter ferocity, "you do NOT call my grandad by that name EVER AGAIN. I highly suggest you do something else beyond bugging people and insulting them RIGHT NOW before I run the risk of getting a criminal record to make sure you get what you deserve!"
Looking down at her shining diamond-laced watch, Cassidy's eyes widened.
"Oh hey, would you look at that," she whimpered, "turns out I DO have something to do after all! So, if you would, um, kindly let me go, and, er, not punch me..."
Jessica released her grip. Cassidy wasted no time putting distance between the two.
"OKseeyalaterPancakeChestI'llcatchyousomeothertime..." And Cassidy disappeared into the crowds as quickly as she could.
Never change, grumbled Jessica, before heading towards the nearest tube station.

Jessica had known Cassidy ever since the two went to the same primary and secondary schools, and aside from her grandparents and Robinson, she was the only significant figure in her childhood. In terms of behaviour and personality, the two back then were little different to how they were now - Jessica the quiet girl who preferred to stay inside and keep to herself, and Cassidy the girl who craved attention and liked bullying anyone she thought less of as a means of doing so. Jessica was a favourite target of Cassidy - why, she couldn't even begin to fathom, since she was very rarely, if even ever, affected by her insults. What she didn't know was that Cassidy had a particular grudge against her for an incident that happened in the past. Though she didn't remember it, it involved Jessica minding her own business, a collapsible TV, two rubber bands, the principle that "the other queue moves faster", a dog that would've been injured had Cassidy not "taken the bullet", and her being humiliated as a result.

Although Cassidy liked to belittle others for their odd traits, she herself had one of her own -  she always spoke with an American accent, despite having been born in the UK to non-American parents, and having never even been to the country. She even went as far as using alternate spelling (color instead of colour, armor instead of armour etc.) and terminology - she never wore trousers, but "pants", she was a star "football" (read: rugby) player on her college's sports team and her favourite "potato chip" flavor was salt and vinegar. Neither her parents nor Jessica understood this habit, though Jessica always thought that Cassidy did it to stand out from the rest of the British-accented crowd. Standing out from the crowd... oh God, Jessica thought, I hope no-one saw me just now, I'd be so embarrased. She then decided to get herself dinner and eat her worries away.

 

************

 

Back at home, Stuart gazed upon one of his latest machines (not THE latest, mind - that would be Dave). To us, it would look like a prop from a 1970's sci-fi television series that could do nothing but showcase just how stunningly inaccurate that era's idea of the 2000's was. It was a giant orb, maybe the size of a small room, with large-ish hemispheres for windows - oll of which would cycle through a different colour. It was perched on four legs resembling shark fins and the interior was accessed via steps leading up to a thick metal door similar to those found on a submarine. Oh, and the rivets. One mustn't forget the many rivets, mostly placed around the windows.

This machine could, possibly, take itself from one location to another instantly, no matter how far it was. As many physicists would state clearly, this should be a scientific impossibility, since this involves travelling faster than light, another scientific impossibility due to an object requiring no mass and infinite energy to achieve the speed of light, yet another scientific impossibility. However, Stuart found a way to take those impossibilities and stuff them up their own backsides. He did this through the combination of the law that a cat always lands on its feet and the law that buttered toast always lands butterside down. After some tests, he had found out that the first idea extends to robot cats as well. So he strapped a slice of buttered toast to the back of the robot cat and put it in a state of constant free-fall. The result was that the two laws constantly fought for dominance over the other, causing the two to spin around at an incredibly fast rate, faster than almost anything else. This exerted an infinite amount of kinetic energy, thus powering the machine, the Mass Converter and Molecule Sequence RAM modules and providing the means of achieving faster-than-light travel.

All one had to do was point a small beacon of light located on top of the vessel at where they wanted it to go and it would shoot themselves there in a flash. Currently the machine was outside and pointing up towards a far-off planet Stuart had discovered and not told anyone about some days prior. He planned to go to this planet and see for himself what was on it and what it was like, as well as stick a sign saying "Stuart Powell was here 2013, slowcoaches" there to confuse and anger NASA and its relatives when humanity finally got there years later as a long, cruel joke. However, he never got around to this as he would always get distracted by something else at the last minute. Tonight was no exception, as he was hungry and went inside to have dinner.

 

Again, feedback = much appreciated.

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  • 1 month later...

Chapter 3 - here's where it really gets going! (pics sometime soon):

 

Later that night, a ragged, disheveled heap calling itself Jessica clambered through the door of the house. She dumped her bags over by the side of the door and allowed her arms to regain some sense of feeling. The London Underground, being the London Underground, experienced a fault on the one line which went to her nearest train station, thus requiring her to wait long hours as she took a much longer and more convoluted way back. Tossing the greasy cardboard box that had contained six chicken nuggets some time prior into the recycling bin, she pressed her forehead against the window showing the back garden. Groaning, she made out the individual objects she could see in the pitch black. The fence. The grass. The shed. The city off in the distance. The big round steel orb. The...



The. What the.

What the fuck.

Jessica's fatigue subsided momentarily as she saw the monstrosity in the garden. She pondered why the bloody hell her grandfather hadn't covered it with a tarpaulin or anything. As it stood to her, it might as well be a giant sign stating "STEAL ME - I DON'T KNOW WHAT I AM MEANT FOR OR HOW VALUABLE I AM, BUT TAKE ME ANYWAY". True, they had never had to deal with thieves, they were fairly isolated from busy areas and they didn't even have any neighbours, but still, why take the risk, she thought. Grabbing a torch from a cupboard, she went outside to investigate. As she circled the sphere, she noticed a door.
"D'you think he's inside?" she asked Robinson.
"Eh, I guess."
Going up the steps and trying the door, she noticed its bizarre lock wasn't in use. Crikey, she thought, he's really asking for it to be stolen! Nethertheless, she went inside and saw the interior. It was a large, curved room with a thick dome in the middle. Attached around it were all sorts of monitors and computers, each hooked up to a seat. She also thought that she heard a cat meowing and smelt butter. The floor was steel grating, and it looked like there was something underneath it. Suddenly, she heard rattling, and quickly jumped back. Unfortunately, she happened to jump onto one (of four) part of the floor that was a trap door, and thus fell to the bottom of the craft in a painful way.
Meanwhile Dave went about its business polishing the equipment, not caring about Jessica. Not that it could.

Landing at the bottom, she found what was beneath the floor - a small room with a fridge, radio, television, laptop and bed. Jessica assumed this was a cabin, prompting her to wonder if this was meant to be some form of transportation, and if it was, then how was it meant to work. By this point, her weariness came back and her backside was aching after taking an unexpected fall. Gazing upon the bed with a smile on her face, she closed the door to the room (and appeciated the inclusion of a ladder) and decided to sleep here.
"Er, Jess, I don't like the look of this place..." Robinson told her.
"Hmm, this bed feels so warm and comfy..." Jessica replied in a dreamy trance.
"Maybe so, but I feel like we should leave befo-"
*click* *click*
Jessica unbuckled her boots with the push of a button on their sides and kicked them off, unintentionally sparking her pet to fly out of harm's way.
"-before something in this machine does some-"
*ziiiiip*
Her hoodie had been unzipped and she tossed it off. However, this time she purposefully tossed it at Robinson. The bird was hit by it and fell to the floor with it.
"...OK, fine, we'll stay here" he surrendered. He nested himself within the folds of the garment and slept. Jessica mean while slipped into the bed and fell asleep almost instantly.

The next morning Stuart got up. As he made himself a bowl of cornflakes he noticed some bags by the door. What would I do without my granddaughter, he thought. He and his wife had taken her in when her parents died in a car accident when she was a baby and raised her like the daughter they didn't have. Her attitude wasn't a result of the tragedy - she was far too young to have known about them so she didn't think much of it or them - and they felt that it was merely something that happens with age. Together they helped her with her studies and (partly as a result of their background as scientists in many professions) she became rather gifted in electronics and chemistry. Rummaging through the bags, Stuart pulled out a newspaper and a silky blouse. He hadn't let it on to Jessica, but the blouse was a Christmas present to be sent to his wife, currently on an expedition in Brazil. He went back to the table and read the newspaper. Celebrity gossip, celebrity gossip, financial claptrap, satellite launched decades ago discovers far-off planet, the crosswo-
"DAUGH?!"
His eyes darted back a few pages. Sure enough, he read what he feared he had:

                                                    OUT OF THIS WORLD!
                 UNKNOWN SATELLITE LAUNCHED DECADES AGO REACHES FAR OFF PLANET
Today NASA has announced to the world a surprising secret - decades ago, before even Voyager 1, they shot an unmanned satellite off into distant space to search for distant planets... and now a new planet is about to be discovered!
The large satellite, known as The Universal SLR, was launched at an undisclosed date (although it has been stated to have been quite some time before the launch of Voyager 1, which was previously thought to have been the farthest man-made object from Earth) many years ago to take photographs of distant planets and transmit them back to Earth.
When questioned about why the satellite's existence was kept a secret, an unnamed NASA rep told us, "Well, it wasn't really intended to be launched, as Voyager 1 (which was in development at that time) would be a superior alternative, but it somehow launched itself... yes, really, don't ask, and we decided that since it would probably fail in a year or so anyway, we would keep it a secret and let its successor take its spot."
"But now its gone and found a new planet... one that appears to support life! To my knowledge, the satellite has drones on it to investigate the planet below. Naturally we're very excited to see what secrets this unnamed planet holds. Expect great things within three days or so!"

The picture took hold of Stuart's eye. Blue, landmasses on it, big pink ring around it... it was the same planet he had discovered! If this wasn't motivation enough for him to try out that machine of his, then nothing would be! Wasting no time in swallowing his cornflakes whole and worrying about the indigestion later, he ran outside to the steel orb in the garden. Bounding up the steps, he shut the door behind him, screwing it tight. Darting for one of the monitors, he typed in some technobabble, jargon and other complex science-speak stuff, ultimately culminating in him slamming a big red button. The machine turned into pure light and shot itself at unimaginable speeds towards this planet. Hurtling past even Pluto within 30 seconds, Earth couldn't even be said to be a microscopic dot to Stuart anymore. Then, as soon as it started, the machine slammed onto land and turned back to metal.

It stood on a planet far, far, far away from humanity. On an island.

 

So.. feedback'd be nice... awful lonely being the only guy what posts here.

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  • 1 month later...

I'm loving this story so far, and I'm really eager to see what happens next. the way you write is really good! It gets a thumbs up from me!

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SOMEONE ELSE POSTED! AND THEY LIKE IT! ;w;

 

Thanks! I'll probably put in a short prologue in my first post so that the jump from Earth to the other planet isn't quite as jarring as it probably is at the moment.

 

Also I should redo Chapter 2's illustrations. God they look bad.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I just got finished with the first chapter. Your writing skills are certainly impressive, friend. I've noticed that you have the same tendency that I sometimes have when I write; adding a ton of really cool description on the beginning to get the reader hyped up, and then not really knowing how to tell the rest of the story, so you just end up winging it. It's because of this that I try to keep a restraint on how descriptive I wrote my stories out to be. You're a lot better at pulling through it than I am.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks for the reply, and you're kinda right on that "dunno how to write the rest" thing. I have a set beginning, a set end, and a few set ideas to fill the space in between, but how exactly to order them often eludes me.

 

And while I'm here, I might as well say that illustrations will be on a "when they're done" basis now - I feel like I should get the actual story out more frequently, and my art's lacking as is, so... yeah.

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So after much procrastination, I finally got Chapter 4 done!

 

Giddy with glee, Stuart zipped over to a nearby computer and checked the conditions outside. To his surprise, the conditions were almost exactly like Earth. the radiation levels, the atmosphere, the gravity... everything checked out. Stuart was now like a child hopped up on sugar in a candy store - he could see what the surface of the planet was like first hand without any of that tedious space suit and oxygen tank buisness to get in the way. He pushed a button on the computer, causing the steps outside the door to form. He began to open the door and take his first steps into a brand new, unknown world, when he looked back and saw Dave wheeling slowly. He had been in such a rush to get here that he forgot all about the robot and how it was cleaning up the machine the night before. If there was anything harmful outside, Dave would be in big trouble.



This was when something else jolted into his head - he was in such a rush to get outside that he forgot all about how if there was anything harmful outside, he himself would be in big trouble. Fortunately, he had thought about this during the machine's development and had developed an experimental weapon - a small ray that could conceivably control and weaponise ("via very complicated but super scientific methods") the electromagnetic spectrum. Although at the moment it could only fire radio waves and microwaves, the former could produce frequencies able to harmlessly "stun" most organisms, while the microwaves were potent enough to harm in extreme cases. Now the question was, did he bring it with him?
"Dave, have you seen this purple device? It's small, looks like a gun, it fires radio and microwaves..."
Dave trundled up to him and took out a purple electromagnetic gun from its chest door.
"Ah! There it is," he said, taking it from his passenger's claw. "What would I do without you, Dave?"
No words came from the robot.
"Oh well, you can stay here and guard the machine while I go outside and see what wonders await. Alright?"
"Function: Not Found."
"Well, just... ah, you'll be fine. Be back in a mo!"
Stuart finally went to the door of the craft, unlocked it, opened it and went outside.

He was not prepared in the slightest to see what existed outside the orb. He had landed on a small island somewhere in the ocean. The sky was black and the clouds a dark gray, almost as if a storm was coming. The first thing that came to his attention was what came out of the middle of the island. It was a massive glowing pink crystal, stretching upwards in a perfectly smooth cuboid shape and ending in a pointy tip, like a pencil touching the clouds. The crystal was surrounded by four big pink crystal triangles, their bases touching the sides of the main crystal and then jutting outwards at a diagonal angle. It was truly a sight to behold, and Stuart was the first human being from Earth to ever see it.

Taking his eyes away from the crystal, he could see that the rest of the island was, by comparison, rather dull. The grass he stood on was green, like any other grass on Earth. On the other side, he could see a single tree. It wasn't a special tree, it was brown with green leaves, like any other tree on Earth. By the tree and facing the ocean, there lay a bed of flowers with purple petals. It was a fairly barren bed, even though the flowers were NOT like any other flower on Earth. Looking around, there seemed to be no land for miles, save for a cliff that stood on its own facing towards the tree and the flowers. But there wasn't a way to get up to that cliff that he could see - he didn't bring a boat, he wouldn't dare climb the face directly and he couldn't point the light on his machine to the top of the landmass and transport himself there, the cliff was that tall. Not to mention, had he not placed a beacon on Earth a few days prior that would allow the machine to instantly return there no matter where it was, he might never align the light in just the right way to return home again.

Pacing around the majestic crystal, he eventually found a large rock. It had a hole in it, and looking inside revealed a cave. Well, he had nowhere else to go, so he might as well take a look at what was inside. But first of all, he surveyed the majestic island he had set foot on, and firmly planted a stick into the earth. Finally, he took a deep breath, and went into the unknown. On the stick was a plaque bearing (in fancy font) a historic message.

"STUART POWELL WAS HERE 2013, SLOWCOACHES"

 

************

 

Using a torch feature in his electromagnetic device, Stuart navigated the cave. It was dark, chilly and went on a downwards slope, with some twists and turns along the way. He realised he must be going underground, and after a while concluded that he was now underneath the ocean. At that moment, the sloping stopped, becoming flat terrain (well, aside from loose rocks that protruded from the floor). Moving forward some more, he could see a wall with three openings - one on its left, one on its right and one in the centre. Peering deep into each opening with his light, he couldn't see much in any of them - no dead ends or the like. As he pondered about which way to go, unbeknownst to him, a small figure hiding behind stalagmites close by stared at him with feelings of curiosity, nervousness, and fear. As it attempted to walk away before he noticed it, it accidentally flicked a small pebble into the air. It came back down to the figure's position and clattered loudly.

Stuart instinctively swung his body backwards, pointing towards the source of the noise with his light and quietly moved towards it, being careful not to make a sound. When he got to the source, he saw nothing there. Well, he certainly saw a stalagmite and a pebble, but he didn't see anything unusual. However, back behind him, he heard the sound of quick footfalls echoing throughout the cave. He raced back to the three cave entrances and tried to locate where the thing that made the sounds had run off to. Acting on a hunch, he took the one on the right and followed on at a pace that would be quick enough to catch up to it, but slow enough so as to not startle it.

Coming out from the leftmost cave entrance in pitch black, guided by a small dull white orb produced from its hands, the figure looked around in confusion. The strange creature it had seen was unlike anything it had seen before, and yet, somehow, it brought back memories... It hid behind the stalagmites again, fearing that another of its kind might be nearby.


************

 

Trundling along inside the mechanical orb that had brought Stuart to this island to begin with, Dave observed the outside. In his astonishment and excitement, Stuart had completely forgotten to even close the door, let alone lock it, and it made a gap through which its robotic caretaker could see the world beyond. Noticing the steps outside could use a wash, Dave clanked and wheeled its way to the entrance. Unfortunately, because it wasn't built with legs, it couldn't handle stairs at all, so it was no surprise (least of all to it - it couldn't be surprised at anything) that it fell down them and landed camera-first into the ground. It couldn't pick itself up, so all it could do was lie down and wait to be manually repositioned by something else.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Chapter 5 folks. Things get kickstarted for Jess and f-bombs are dropped.

Below the floor of the orb, in one of the four hidden cabins, what was once a disheveled, groggy heap rose up from her bed, now refreshed and calm. Stretching her arms, legs and body, Jessica brushed her hair into its usual fasion and slipped on her discarded attire. Seeing the sleeping Robinson nested in her hoodie, she remembered how she flung it at him. Feeling slightly guilty, she gently woke up her companion and apologised about the night before.
"Ah, that's OK, Jess. You did have a busy day yesterday, I can see why you'd be groggy and pissed."
"Er... OK... still, sorry I nearly hurt you," she said, climbing up out of the cabin. As her head poked through the entryway, a bright light from outside caught her offguard.
"Blegh, sunny days. Why do sunny days exist in winter, can't we all just learn to embrace cold snowy weather?"
However, as she went out through the open door, and after closing it, she walked down two steps, then tripped up over a hitherto-unnoticed domestic robot who lay down, unable to get up. Picking herself up and dusting off her outfit, she set Dave upright, letting the robot wheel his way around the area.
"So Robinson, what do you fan...cyyyyyyyyy..."
Jessica's question went unanswered as her eyes widened and jaw dropped upon seeing where exactly she was. Which is to say, where she was not. She was not in her back garden, as she had thought she was, with a nice house, quiet environment and city landscape. She was instead in front of a giant pink crystal emitting pink light and pointing towards the thundercloudy heavens. Which stood on an island in the ocean with no other land in sight save for a cliff face nearby. And the only other things on the island were a lone tree and alien flowers.

To say Jessica became slightly hysterical at this revelation would be downplaying things.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!" she shrieked at the top of her voice. "WHERE THE FUCK AM I?! WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED WHEN I WAS ASLEEP?! WHERE THE FUCK IS MY HOUSE?! WHAT'S THE FUCKING SEA DOING HERE?!  AM I DREAMING?! DEAR GOD PLEASE TELL ME I'M DREAMING!"
Robinson was also shocked at his location, though he only managed to get out a quiet, "Impossible... t-this is just... impossible..."
Jessica, meanwhile, darted back into the orb, desperately looking to see if anything inside it had changed, any colours changed, any obvious machines fiddled with, anything moved, anything. She didn't understand any of it though, and didn't know what, if anything, had been messed with. She thought about how the outside world could've been changed... or rather, WHO could've changed it. And she knew the likely culprit.

Robinson got a nasty shock when he heard the door of the craft behind him slam open, then shut, then the sound of angry footsteps stomping towards him. He saw Jessica, utterly fuming with stiffened arms, bared teeth and clenched fists, stomp towards Dave, who had been wheeling its way around the island by itself. Grabbing it and sharply twisting it around, she spoke very loudly to it, "Right, YOU. I don't know WHAT THE FUCK you did to my area, but YOU are going to fix it! If you don't I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL BLUDGEON YOU UP AGAINST THAT MONSTROSITY YOU MADE!", pointing several times at the giant crystal in the centre of the island.
"Er, Jess? I kinda doubt Dave did it..." Robinson pointed out to the girl who was now like a volcano.
"OH YEAH?! WELL THEN WHO DID THIS?! WHO ELSE COULD'VE USED THAT INFERNAL MACHINE TO FLOOD THE WHOLE FUCKING WORLD AND MAKE GIANT CRYSTALS SPAWN EVERYWHERE?!" she shot back with unflinching rage.
"L-look, I know you're upset, but I think you're overreacting a bit-"
"A BIT?! A FUCKING BIT?! I'M SORRY, BUT I WOKE UP FROM A GOOD NIGHT'S SLEEP, EXPECTING TO FIND A NICE HOUSE IN A NICE AREA, AND INSTEAD GETTING STUCK ON A TINY ISLAND IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, WITH MY HOUSE REPLACED WITH A FUCKING GIANT PINK CRYSTAL! I THINK MY 'OVERREACTING' IS KINDA JUSTIFIED RIGHT NOW!!!"

Silence immediately fell. It stayed for several minutes. Robinson flew in place, almost deaf from the auditory blitz. Jessica just stared angrily at nothing in particular, letting her anger subside and her throat get rest. Dave just looked around for no reason at all.

Until the silence was at last broken, by faint breathing. Not from Robinson, nor Jessica, and certainly not from Dave, but from something hiding behind the pink crystal. Hearing this, Jessica tiptoed around it to see what it was, and she was not expecting what she saw at all. It was a little girl. Humanoid, roughly about eight years old from her appearance, but noticeably smaller than most girls of that age - her head only reached about 75% of the way to her knee. Her large eyes had no pupils. Her face was one displaying shyness, fear, and worry, and her posture had her knees pointing inwards and her arms huddled together, as if to guard against an imminent attack. But the most striking thing about her was her colour - she was chalk white with grey hair (styled into two pigtails behind her back), grey eyes, a grey dress that left her arms and shins bare, and grey shoes. The only colourful thing on her were the two bands that maintained her grey, crescent-shaped pigtails. Robinson was rather surprised by her appearance, with his eyes widening a little (well, as far as a robin's eyes can widen, anyway).

Jessica immediately assumed her rage had caused her to panic, and tried to explain things to the girl, who she thought was also affected by whatever had happened to their area.
"Look, I'm sorry about my outburst earlier, it's just that someone's done something to change this place, and I'm just a bit angry about that... I'm sorry about what's happened to you... I didn't know this thing could affect living things as well... l-look, I'll try and fi-"
"Y-y-you're just like that other one," the girl replied in a quiet, hushed voice. "You're just like that one I saw earlier! You're even speaking Char! Only... y-you look m-more like me... and Lumina... a-a-and-"
"Sorry, what? Who's this 'other one'," Jessica asked, "and where did you see them? Also, what's 'Char', and who's 'Lumina'?"
"F-follow me..." she stuttered back, as she gestured them towards a cave entrance, which Jessica was surprised she hadn't paid attention to until now. "W-w-we're f-f-friends now... a-aren't we...?"
Jessica shrugged and said "Sure we are." Almost instantly, the girl dropped her shyness and smiled.
"Thank you! I'm so happy to have another friend! My name's Voidica, by the way. What's yours?"
"Uh... Jessica. Jessica Powell. Look, what's going on?"
"I'll tell you along the way, come on! I found something I think you'd like!" And with that, she went into the cave. Jessica and Robinson, with nothing better to do, went in with her.

Meanwhile, Dave continued moving around the island. Its video recorder was activated when it fell onto the ground, and it played through the footage of Jessica screaming at it. It rewatched it again, as a result of what could be called a small glitch. Then it did so again, this time for no real reason.

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  • 1 month later...

Chapter 6 is a bit on the talky side, so if that's a problem, I apologise.

Going a ways further along the cave he had gone in, Stuart noted that the ground now sloped upwards as he found it harder to traverse. He had seen a red coloured wall on the way, but he thought nothing of it and passed it. Suddenly, as he reached the top of the slope, he found himself facing something he did not expect to see in a cave on another planet unimaginable distances from Earth - a spiral staircase. Hearing his natural instinct to find out what was at the top of it and agreeing with it, he began walking up the staircase. It was a fairly average climb - neither surprisingly short nor stupidly long - and as he kept on ascending, he saw lights on the walls of the staircase, prompting him to turn off his "torch". Finally, he reached its end and emerged back into the dark, stormy outside. Looking around, he saw the island that he had just come from, and realised that he was now on the cliff that he had seen facing the island. As he looked behind him, he saw something which had been hidden from view from his vantage point on the island. It looked like a small brown house. It had a chimney, which was emitting smoke. The windows flickered orange. It had a very cosy look to it.



Stuart was pleasantly surprised to find that whatever beings lived on this planet, they were sufficiently advanced enough to build houses and make fire. He walked briskly over there to see just what was inside. Besides, it was rather nippy outside and being inside a nice house with a fire inside felt like a very good idea. He looked inside a window, but he couldn't see clearly. Walking around, he saw a door. Not only that, but the door had a sign on it. Bizarrely enough, he saw that the sign, despite being located on a cliff standing in the middle of nowhere on a planet ungodly distances from Earth, was written in perfect English. "Old O'Leary's Pub", it said. Now Stuart was even more keen to find out what was going on. Pubs on another planet? In the middle of nowhere on said planet? With signs written in English? Feeling no other course of action but the one that first sprung to mind, he opened the door and walked in. To his surprise, the inside did indeed look like a pub, but there was one key thing distancing it from any pub he had ever been to on Earth.

All the patrons were leprechauns. They were slightly bigger than what he thought they would be (they were about as high as his waist), but leprechauns nonetheless.


************

 

"So... uh... 'Voidica'... mind telling me why we need to go down this cave? This dark, cold, rocky cave?" Jessica asked her new "friend".
"Because it's where I found the thing I want to show you," Voidica replied.
"OK, but do we really need to go down here, in pitch-black darkness, without any form of illumination?"
At that moment, Voidica made a white orb appear on her finger. She made another one, a much larger one, in her free hand. Jessica was utterly baffled by this - surprisingly, less by that she made them at all, but more by how these orbs worked: they didn't seem to be penetrating the darkness, so much as they were absorbing it and sending it to parts unknown, only to return whenever the orb moved. Voidica gave the larger one to her, and as she held it in her hand, she was disoriented at how weightless it was.
Together, they continued on their trek down the cave. Feeling like she should at least understand what the hell was going on, Jessica asked, "Look, what's been going on here? Does it have anything to do with that eyesore back outside?"
"That thing?" Voidica replied. "Oh no, that's been there for years."
"Wait, what? That can't be right, just yesterday there was a house there, and there wasn't an island surrounded with water, there were fields, hills, London off in the distance."
"Lun done? What's that?"
"Oh great, I'm starting to feel like I'm on another world-"
"Are you?" Voidica gasped. "I thought it was only the cities that got visitors from other planets! I never knew some would come here!"
"...let me ask you a question. This planet we're on... it wouldn't happen to be called "Earth", would it?"
"Earth? No, haven't heard that na-wait a minute! Yes I've heard it! Lumina told me she went there once! Oh, I'd love to go see it my-"
"So it's NOT the Earth I'm on, is it?" Jessica said, completely deadpan.
"No, this planet is named 'Enchantus'."

 

At this moment the extent of what Jessica had said and heard finally made her fully realise what was going on. She still refused to believe it.
"...I'm sorry?!" Jessica said with an expression and tone of disbelief, "Are you telling me that this is not, and has never been, the Earth, and that I am, therefore, currently on another planet speaking to a tiny monochrome girl who can make weightless balls of... whatever this stuff is?!"
"...Yes?" Voidica answered with a tinge of nervousness in her voice.
"OK then, if this is an alien planet, and if you are an alien... why and how are you speaking perfect English?!"
"Inglish? I'm speaking Char. Everyone does on this planet."
"Sorry, what? Char? What's that and why's it so similar to English?"
"It's what the ruler of this world speaks... I-I don't feel comfortable talking about him..." Voidica said, shying away.
Looking at the white orb in her hand, Jessica felt this was as good a time as any to talk about them. "OK, these orbs. What are they, and how do you make them?"
"Oh, those? Magic." Voidica said, like you would say "Oh, the winter is colder than the summer".
Jessica sighed. "Very funny. You can tell me, I won't tell anyone else."
"No, really, it's magic. Void magic, to be specific."
"Void... magi..." Jessica trailed off here. Turning to Robinson, who had been rather quiet all this time, she asked him in whispered tones, "Robinson, what the FUCK is going on here?!"
"Well, Jess, it seems your grandad's machine sent us immeasurably immense distances from Earth to this planet."
"And this 'magic'? Is she having a laugh?! There's no such thing!"
At this moment, Voidica said "Follow me, into this cave, please," as the group reached a large room with three cave entrances - one left, one right and one centre. She went into the one on the left, and Jessica followed her.


************

 

Stuart felt rather uncomfortable. Upon entering the pub, he attracted looks from all the patrons. This was understandable, as they were all leprechauns drinking alcohol in a pub located on a remote cliff face, and he was not. However, this nervousness subsided as they simply went back to their drinks and conversations and payed him no heed. One particular leprechaun, standing behind the bar, asked Stuart, "Can I get you something?"
Stuart was taken aback by this. Not only did this leprechaun speak English, but he spoke it with what was unmistakably a Irish accent. "Oh, um, I, uh, don't think I've got the, uh, how you say, uh-"
"You're new to this planet, aren't you?" the leprechaun said.
"Well, uh, yes I suppose. See, I come from another planet, it's called Earth, and-"
"Earth?! THE Earth?! Well, I don't believe it, it's a human from our own world, boys!" At this, the pub was filled with cheers and applause. "Whatever you want, boyo, it's on the house!"
Feeling flustered by this, Stuart said, "Er, OK, how about some... er..." Truth be told, he was never really much of a drinker; he mostly went to pubs to catch the local football match with some friends of his (to which Jessica would just roll her eyes and ask herself why males, especially grown ones, cared so much about 22 people kicking a ball around for an hour and a half) and rarely, if ever, drank alcohol.
"Oh, here's a good one, came straight from the drink mines on Gjhinandtonickz Double-Ecks," said the leprechaun, who by this point Stuart had correctly assumed to be the 'Old O'Leary' mentioned on the sign outside, as he took out a bottle of gold-coloured liquid. "Doubt the folks back at home will have heard of this, eh?"
Pouring himself a glass of the stuff, Stuart asked O'Leary, "So, uh, if you'll forgive me for asking, why are there leprechauns here? I thought they mostly stayed in Ireland." Prior to this meeting, he thought leprechauns didn't exist, but he felt it would be more polite to not tell him this.
"Oh yeah, they do... well, did. See, due to, er, how shall we say, 'rumours' back home, we felt it'd be safer for us to take our growing pub business to other planets."
Stuart took a sip of the drink. It tasted remarkably like caramel mixed with chocolate. "Mmh! This stuff's pretty good. What else do you have?"

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  • 1 month later...

Do you love reading? Well good - Chapter 7's a bloody long, but bloody important chapter!

Now Jessica and her escort had come to a dead end, with a small pool of pebbles in the centre of the ground. A lone torch burned green, lighting up the area. Voidica carefully shifted some pebbles as she dug for the thing she had found earlier, hid, and now wanted to show her new friend. Eventually, she pulled a metallic oblong object out of the pool. It was around the size of an earpiece found on a set of headphones, and it indeed looked like such. It was shiny and silver, with one side curving inwards with soft material within, seemingly designed to fit over the ear of a human. The other side had a small circular indentation, the edge of which was segmented into several small squares. The indent contained two small buttons. A switch was in place where the earpiece (if it was such) would connect to the headpiece, and a rectangular protrusion came out from one side. All in all, it looked very much like something her grandad would've made out of part of a construction worker's old ear defenders.



"Here, I think you should have this. It's too big for me, and I'm not that good with 'machines'." Voidica gave it to Jessica, who dusted it off a bit and stared at it in her right hand with a confused look.

"OK, so what is this and where did you find it?" Robinson inquired. The fact that Voidica didn't react to her talking robin didn't phase Jessica, since as far as she knew, as far as the alien girl knew, all robins on Earth were able speak.

"It's a... thing... I... don't know what it is, I only found it fairly recently. I was playing with some pebbles here, when I felt this. I wasn't sure what it was, so I went to ask Lumina, and then I heard something coming into that big cave section we were in a while ago, and I hid behind a rock and then I saw what it was," (and at this point Voidica was speaking more rapidly with a tone of anxiousness,) "and it looked just like you, but with a different outfit, and different face, and-and-and-a-"
"Hold on a minute," Jessica silenced Voidica, "did this 'something' you see have a light grey beard? That is, a lot of hair on your face, completely hides the skin."
"Eurgh, yes," she replied. Her tone of voice indicated that it was the first time she was told what a beard was, and that it was something she didn't want to know.
"And did it have a white coat? I-"
"Yes!" Voidica clearly knew what a coat was. "Do you know it?"
"Yes. I believe I do. And I also have some less than suitable things to say to him, so do you know where he went?"
"Oh, er... no...," Voidica looked away in shame.
"Don't feel bad, Voidica," Robinson said, "I doubt he'd have gotten far. I know," he said to Jessica, "how about she and I look for him, while you stay here and try out that thing?"
"Why do I have to stay behind?"
"Because seeing an alien on an alien planet is less likely to give him a heart attack than seeing his own grandaughter, who as far as he knows is currently asleep in her bed on Earth, on an alien planet."
"Good point, I guess," Jessica admitted. So as Voidica and Robinson went back the way they came (and she heard Robinson explaining Stuart to Voidica until they were out of earshot), she looked once more at the silver object in her hand.

Looking at the side with soft material, she figured it was indeed meant to go over the ear, and fitted it over her left one. To her surprise, the device fit well on her ear, despite not having any kind of strap to keep it attached to the head. She found the object fitted better with the switch pointing upwards, and also found that the rectangular protrusion, which had been pointing behind her, could be rotated 180 degrees as she moved it around. It locked into place so that it was now pointing in front of her. She flicked the switch on the device's top. At that moment, the indent on the object's other side shined a brilliant light, and from the rectangle came a strip of white light. It curved around her face and went toward her right ear, where it ended in a ring around it. The light eventually dimmed and allowed Jessica to see that the strip of light had now become a glass (or at least, something that had similar properties to glass, namely being transparent) visor. An odd thing appeared within the glass: a box with many kinds of symbols within it, arranged as if they formed words. The first "word" was surrounded with a white rectangle. Jessica, not knowing what it all meant, tried moving the edge of the indent. The rectangle moved down to the next row of symbols as she moved the edge. It worked like a wheel, and she kept scrolling down. Then, she found the word "Char" among the incomprehensible symbols. Moving her finger to one of the buttons, she pressed it, and the rectangle blinked.

Then the box disappeared as a new one showed up - this time she saw English words. They said "Please select colour". Her options were "[None]", "Red", "Green" and Blue". Moving the wheel so that "Red" was selected, she again hit the button. Suddenly, what had been a clear visor turned a translucent red. She liked the new look for this thing. After a few minutes of calibrating, she had become accustomed to how this thing worked, and had adjusted the focus, interface and whatnot for human use. She was relieved to find an electronic manual on the thing, and, needing to know just what this thing was, read it.
"Mystiscope v.3 - User's Guide," read the first page. Skimming over the legal rubbish that plagued all electronic hardware manuals' first few pages, even, it would seem, those in outer space, she got to the "How to Use" section. Skimming through, she read "Scanning a subject: If you should have animals/minerals/vegetables within the Scope's field of vision, use the wheel to cycle through them until the subject you wish to scan is selected, then press Button 1 to scan them. Once scanned, you will receive information about it, including its encyclopedia entry (NOTE: If the subject in question is not listed in the Scope's database, you may write up your own entry for them), Element type, Magic Core, Life Ener-"
Jessica ceased reading. She was now perplexed - first this alien girl makes impossible objects that she calls "void magic", and now she finds a machine that mentions "magic cores", "elements" and who else knows what. Seeking an explanation for all this, she went looking for Robinson and Voidica.


************

 

Little was she aware that they were currently outside, back on the island. They hadn't found Stuart, and so thinking he had gone back up, went back to the surface. Since he wasn't there (or rather, he was, but farther away from them), they decided to survey the landscape (what little of it there was). Dave, who had all this time been milling around doing nothing worthy of note, came up behind them and caught their attention. Voidica hadn't seen Dave earlier, when she heard noises coming from outside the cave where she first saw the creature that bore a similar structure to her new friend and had gone out to see what caused them, and now felt eager to be aquainted to the strange metal creature.
"Hello!" she waved to Dave, who just stared blankly at her. She noticed a small red light within its camera - this indicated that the recorder that had been activated by its fall earlier was still active, though of course she didn't know this.
After a while, it said "Hello," back, but with no emotion at all. This confused Voidica, who hadn't had much experience with talking to robots.
"Oh don't mind him, well, it. That's how he - actually, it - speaks," Robinson told her.
With this in mind, she said, smiling, "My name's Voidica, what's yours?"
After a pause, Dave replied, as monotone as ever, "Name: Dave. Function: Assist humans with their daily tasks. Capabilities: Hosing, cooking, refridgerating, vacuuming, sweeping, transporting, frying, slicing, microwaving..."
As Dave rattled on its numerous functions, Robinson spoke to Voidica, "Why don't you show him... it... bleugh, you know what I mean... the sights here, limited as they may be, while I go back for Jess." With that, he flew back inside the cave as Dave finished off its impressive (and long) list of functions.
"Oh, uh, that's... interesting," Voidica replied with the voice and face one would use when they pretend to have understood something someone has told them, when in reality they did not understand it at all. "Er, look, can I show you something?" She grabbed the robot's broom "arm" and pulled its owner over to the nearby bed of flowers. Picking up one flower from the many there, she showed it to Dave's "eye".
Dave stared blankly while she tried to communicate with the robot, "This is a flower. Do you like flowers?"
Dave took the flower in its claw and brought it to its eye. Then it stared blankly at it.


************

 

"Wow, you've sure got quite the selection of drinks, O'Leary," Stuart made a slurred effort to point out to the old leprechaun over a glass of purple chocovolt milk from the Hyperflat Plains of the Crab Nebula. He was now experiencing an alien form of intoxication from the cocktail of giant yellow honeyeyes, jofan oxide, polion and whipped cream - while retaining some of the recogniseable effects of intoxication by alcohol - mainly slurred speech - instead of affecting the nervous system and causing violent behaviour, euphoria etc., it made the drinker eager to drink more and more varied liquids.
While not as dangerous as alcohol intoxication, this kind was still a notable cause of embarrassment throughout the galaxy, and so O'Leary leaned towards Stuart and told him, "Look, son, why don't you step outside for a minute and look at the pretty crystal? It's said to bring you the most awesome visions when you're around the influence." This was, of course, merely something he made up to stop patrons from commiting acts of buffoonery once intoxicated.
"Oh really? Well that's something I'll go do now." said Stuart as he stood up, straightened up his coat, and walked outside, all with the intention of treating himself to a sample of that bubbly liquid in a hot pink bottle he had seen one leprechaun have.
Outside, he walked back up to the cliff edge facing the island. Looking at the crystal on O'Leary's advice, his urge to drink more fluids vanished. He did not, however, experience any visions at all, but was content to look down on the island below. That vision is awesome no matter what state of mind you're in, he thought to himself.
He was later glad that he was a safe distance from the edge as he stumbled back in shock from seeing a small, grey coloured girl in the flower bed.


************

 

Robinson didn't get very far before he literally bumped into Jessica. She had forgotten that she couldn't see in the caves without Voidica and her so-called void magic sending darkness to nowhere, and her new Mystiscope lacked a night-vision setting, so she had to stumble and feel her way back out. She got about halfway when Robinson flew into her face, as in his haste he too had forgotten he lacked a means of seeing in the dark.
"Oops, heh heh. Sorry, Jess."
"Ech... did you find him?"
"No, he must've gone in one of the other caves. Voidica's back outside trying to make friends with Dave."
"Oh God, the bloody hoover? Well, I think we've both proven to ourselves that we can't see jack in these caves without her... 'magic', so let's go and get her."
They both headed upwards, back towards the entrance.

Voidica was rather puzzled. She had been frequently visiting this island for a long time, and yet never realised that the tree was hollow until Dave meandered about (while attempting to consult its in-built Gardener's Guide in an attempt to identify Voidica's flower) and ended up going inside it via a large opening in the trunk. Lumina had told her about this habit, and how the people of Earth had it too - never noticing something until a long time later, be it their "keys" lying out in the open or a perticular landmark's appearance/disappearance in an area.
Deciding to relax in the flower bed, she saw Dave's eye staring at her through a small hole in the tree. Unblinking, unmoving, that red light shining inside all the time. As she fiddled with the petals of one flower, she thought about how she had seen a similar being before, and how she felt nervous when confronted by it back then too. She closed her eyes and realised how much more comfortable she was when befriending this one. Was it because of her meeting with Jessica, a member of the people she had hitherto only ever heard of? Undoubtly. She was having a rather poorly few weeks prior to this event, and now she was happier and more excited than she had ever been in her life, even if years of hiding behing shyness and anxiousness meant she wasn't showing it on the outside very well. Oh, how she couldn't wait to show Lumina her new friend. She'd understand letting Jessica see her; after all, she-

A low noise could be heard in the distance.

As Jessica and Robinson finally emerged into daylight (or what could be charitably called daylight in a grey, stormy sky) and back onto the side of the island that the large crystal obscured from view from the cliff face, the little robin saw Jessica's Mystiscope.
"So that's what that thing does? Make a pretty red visor? Where's that thing even kept inside that dinky little earpiece?"
An idea suddenly lept into Jessica's head. Bringing her hand to her left ear, she turned the wheel, and off in the distance, Voidica was selected in the visor's GUI. Pressing a button, the text "Scanning" appeared on a black background, along with a bar which quite quickly filled up. Once it was finished, she saw Voidica's body as a 2D image, again on the black background, along with the text "VOID ELEMENTAL" in large red letters. Scrolling down, she saw more red text, all in capital letters:
"This type of Elemental is able to use Void magic - the ability to create voids, open up holes to other voids, send things into a void or even destroy them outright. The first Void Ele-"

Jessica didn't bother to read the rest of the text. Now this thing is saying it's magic this girl is using?! This is just rubbish, she thought. She began to walk to Voidica, when suddenly, a continuous beeping noise bombarded her left ear. Wincing, she flicked the switch on top of the earpiece, causing the visor to immediately retract back into it and the noise to stop. Then, a loud engine noise filled the air. From the cliff, Stuart crouched down and darted his head back and forth.
Robinson nervously said, "I-I think w-we're better off hiding for a minute..."
Jessica sighed, "Oh come on, I get that this is an alien world, but that's probably nothing to worr- hey is that a jet coming this way?"
Sure enough, from where the tree stood, a strange jet was flying towards the island. "Looks a bit... purple."
"JESS, GET BEHIND THE FUCKING CRYSTAL NOW," Robinson shouted with complete fear.
"OK, fine, I'll humour you," she said, sitting behind the crystal face. "Actually, shouldn't Voidi-"
"OH GOD, HOW COULD I FORGET?! I'M GONNA GO-"
At that moment, Stuart watched in awe as the jet zoomed down onto the island, then by some miracle of engineering, slowed down almost instantly as it folded in on itself, sent parts here, tucked away parts there, before ending up with the form of a robot.

It was around the size of a large human, coloured a shiny, metallic purple, with areas of gold on the waist, large shoulders, bulky forearms, flared shins and feet. There was shiny silver around the torso, upper arms and thighs. Its hands were also a shiny silver, and had long, sharp fingers. Its knees were denoted by red diamonds on the lower legs, and the centre of its torso had what appeared to be red abdominal muscles. Sharp, silver blades were on its feet and shoulders. The chest had a black cavity and was decorated with five coloured jewels surrounding a glowing, pinkish-purple symbol of an eye. A purple, glowing cape appeared like light from its back and flowed in the wind.
But the most extraordinary thing about it was its head. It was a large, transparent sphere with gold eyes (and their thin black pupils) on the outside. The eyes resembled the eye shown on the robot's chest. Inside the sphere was a silver "brain", with glowing cyan "veins", and it was surrounded by bubbling green liquid. This gave the head a menacing, green glow.

It stood tall and imposing, and as Stuart and Jessica watched from their respective hiding places, they saw this miraculous metal man turn towards the now startled Voidica and walk towards her. Dave saw Voidica's face turn from shock, to disbelief, to utter fright. It heard her whimpering and crying, as she futilely backed away from the robot. It pointed its spike-like index finger at Voidica, and a small scarlet ball formed on the tip. Voidica was too frightened to speak coherently; all she could do was think about what was inevitably going to happen next. Stuart wished he could do something, but his electromagnetic device didn't have anything on it that could stop the robot.

Then the air was filled with a ghastly scream.

Then a deafening crack.

Then silence.

As the robot turned back into the jet it had arrived as and left, Dave, Stuart and Jessica all saw Voidica, now with a frozen look of terror on her face and a glowing scarlet hole in her head, fall to the ground. All traces of life from her, gone.

 

Sorry if it's such a long read, but yeah, enjoy.

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  • 3 weeks later...

This I admit seems to be shaping up to be an interesting story. There are some wonky run on sentences here and there, but overall I'm kinda intrigued to see where things roll from this point.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Chapter 8. I hope I didn't make the last bit of it sound hokey, given some character development starts here.

 

For a long time, no one moved. Not a sound filled the air. All eyes were on the still body of Voidica. Then, from up on top of the cliff, Stuart got up, darted his head back and forth, and once he was sure the strange purple robot was gone, ran back to the pub. A few seconds later, Jessica nervously walked out from behind the crystal, Robinson cowering inside her hood.
"V...Voidica? Are you...," she asked, hoping for the young alien girl to show any signs of life. She had no real bond with her - she only knew her for all of ten minutes anyway - but she was still shocked at the thought of her getting killed, let alone as out of nowhere as what had happened.
Robinson's mind was buzzing with unpleasent thoughts. Please cough, he thought to himself, oh lord please cough! Wheeze, sneeze, groan, for the love of God, show ANY signs of life!
But he knew the sad facts - she was killed in cold blood.
Jessica approached Voidica's body, when suddenly, the scarlet hole in her head sent four glowing cracks slowly crawling across her head. Then the cracks multiplied and spread to her body, even affecting her clothes. Then, a brief flash occured, and her entire body slowly collapsed and crumbled into a fine white dust. Robinson, who had momentarily peeked at all this from behind Jessica's hair, suddenly had his eyes fixed on it. He flew out from Jessica's hood, landed on the ground beside the dust, and stood dead still. No movement, no sound, nothing. Jessica gazed upon the dust too, her mind splintered by what had happened.

Suddenly, a faint glow penetrated from a small lump of dust, which collapsed to reveal the source of it. It was a small orb, around the size of a cricket ball, and it was a dull white in colour. Occasionally, it flashed one of several colours for a tenth of a second. After 10 seconds, the colour faded to a glowing orange. Completely confused as to what this thing was, why it appeared from the dissolved body of an alien girl, and against her better judgement, she turned her Mystiscope back on and scanned the orange orb. Once more, it showed a page of information, with a picture of the orb, the title, "Magic Core", and text beneath it:

"A Magic Core is a mystical organ found within Mystics (specifically Elementals and Sorcerors) - it is a small orb that is the source of a Mystic's magic. Magic Cores can be one type of magic out of several (e.g. Transformation magic, creation magic, elemental magic - for this the element itself varies), and it is this magic that the Mystic is provided with, although this does not prohibit them from learning magic of a different type than the core they have. A Core can exist either by being born within a Mystic, or by being absorbed from outside an organism's body. A Core is practically invisible to all but a few forms of scanning, and cannot be touched by any means unless it is released upon the Mystic's death. If it is released by this method, it will typically lie in place for three minutes, and if it is not picked up for that amount of time, it will fade away and disappear."

There was some information about the history of cores, types of cores, what particular type this one was and other such trivia, but Jessica didn't bother with any of it.

Jessica, who had now come to grips with the situation, found herself being confused by this new information. So this thing is honestly telling her to believe that what Voidica had been using to "light" the dark cave was indeed magic, that this orange orb was the thing that gave her the stuff and that there are other creatures like her? With a resigned shrug, she decided she would play along with what the thing said - maybe it was all just some alien biology that some idiot decided to call magic.
She bent down to pick up the orange orb.
"A-a-a-a-a-a-are you... r-r-r-r-really sure that's a good idea?" the little bird interrupted with his nervous and panicked voice as her hand was inches away from it. "I mean, it only came from an alien... whose body bleedin' well disintegrated upon death... and got MURDERED for no reason... l-like, at all..."
"Look, think of it this way - Voidica would've wanted to show us more of this planet, am I right?"
"Well, um... yes, but-"
"And if we're actually going to get anywhere off this island, our best bet is to go through those other caves back there. Which we've
previously established require illumination of some sort."
"True, and ye-"
"And, this thing," Jessica told Robinson as she pointed at the metal earpiece which now rested on her ear, turned off and hidden behind her long black hair, "seems to be some sort of encyclopedia that brings up pages on things whenever I scan them. And the page for this thing just told me that's what gave Voidica her so-called 'void magic'. I say that if we take it with us, then we'll be carrying out her wishes in her name."
After a long pause in which Robinson thought to himself, he finally replied, "OK. Take it. But don't blame me if something awful happens to us because of this."

Jessica's hand picked up the orb and gently picked it up off the ground. Looking at it, she stood back up. Then, from within the palm of her hand, it shined a bright orange, nearly blinding Jessica, and a continuous, mystical, shimmering sound was made. But once her eyes adjusted to the light and her ears to the sound, she saw the orange orb slowly shrinking into her hand, the glow fading away and the sound slinking away in a deep note. She was amazed and awestruck by what had happened as she stared deep into the palm of her hand. Then, within her, she felt something... some kind of energy deep within her; a calm emptiness, but also an ethereal fullness at the same time.
"Wow..." is all she could say. She had never felt this feeling in her entire life. It felt invigorating, to say the least. "Just... wow!"
But that was only the start of it - she thought about the dull white orbs Voidica made from the power that this "Core" supposedly gave her, and one instantly grew into her own hand and made a quiet, otherworldly chime. Her eyes widened as she stared into the sphere composed entirely of nothingness. She looked to the sky and thrust her hand up at it. The sphere whistled an otherworldly sound as it instantly flew from her hand into the sky, where it disappeared into the distance without a trace.

With a smile on her face, she wondered about what else she could do with this power to seemingly make, from nothing, spheres of... well, what amounted to nothing. Remembering the purple robot from earlier, she decided she would be safer if she tried out her new abilities in the cave, rather than stay outside and risk being killed for no good reason. Besides, perhaps she'll find her grandad somewhere inside, and she'd rather get confirmation that he's gotten himself killed than sit inside the machine guessing about his survival. Turning her head to the pile of dust that was once Voidica, she took the flower she had been holding prior to her death and placed it in the spot where she had taken the Core from. Then, she went over to the cave and, a void sphere in her hand, went back down, Robinson riding in her hood.


************

 

"HURRY, QUICK! SOMEONE'S BEEN SHOT!"
The pub of leprechauns went quiet and everyone turned their heads towards Stuart, who had just raced back in.
"What exactly happened?" asked O'Leary. He didn't seem to be shaken or affected by the news.
"Well," Stuart began to recap as he walked to the bar, "I was outside, looking at that crystal like you told me too, very beautiful sight by the way, must get a load of tourists-"
"Actually we don't get many people 'round these parts. On account of it being isolated, y'know."
"Really? Well, they're missing out, anyway, I was looking at it when, on the island. I saw this... girl. It looked like a little girl you'd find on Earth - grey hair, grey clothes, white-ish skin - well, I mean, you don't find girls like that on Earth, but, well, y'know what I mean-"
"Look, stop mollygopping around the hedge and get to the point."
"OK, so, she's minding her buisness, when suddenly, a purple jet thing flew in, turned into a robot, and fucking shot her! She didn't even do anything to antagonise it, she was straight up murdered!"
"A purple jet that turned into a robot, you say?" O'Leary took off his glasses, polished them with a bright orange handkerchief and put them back on as he leaned in close to Stuart and told him, "Well now. Are you willing to believe what I'm about to tell you?"
"Well, yes, but, shouldn't we tell someone about this?" Stuart replied with anxiousness.

"That won't get you far, and here's why - that purple robot is known to the whole planet as Charn. He's the ruler of it - Supreme Dictator of Enchantus, he calls himself. He's like... oh, what did you fellows back on Earth call him... the Russian lad, whole storm about him, ruled his country, killed people, said they never existed at all, not exactly seen as a nice bloke..."
"Joseph Stalin?"
"Yes, him!" O'Leary said as he clicked his fingers as the thought lept into his brain, "Basically, take him - purges, iron fist, cover-ups and all - and make him ruler of an entire planet. Everyone on this planet is so loyal to him that they'll think you're lying if you say he murdered someone. Worst case scenario, the Rumour Police get on you, kill you, and wipe out all traces of your existance any way they can - killing anyone who met you, is related to you... Basically if they catch wind of you witnessing that girl's death, you'll be pushing up daisies, m'lad. And if they know we met you, we'll be joining you."
Stuart gulped as his eyes widened. This was quite the mood whiplash - in the same spot where a few minutes ago he had happily drunk a fine glass of Shand Rocky, now he was being told that the planet he was on was ruled by a transforming alien robot with an unimaginably large empire at his hands who could kill anyone he liked and get away scot free, and that as witness to one of his murders, he was now a likely target.

"O-O-O-O-OK..." Stuart was now feeling very hot and nervous. "W-well, can you direct me to a point on this planet where I can do some
sightseeing without risking execution?"

"Go on, tell 'im about the ruins," slurred one leprechaun over a pint of interstellar lager.
"Ah yes! You probably passed by a red wall coming here? That's made of 'knownite' - it's called that because it has the bizarre ability to be indestructible unless you know for certain that it can be destroyed. And then suddenly anything'll knock it down. That'll get you into the Understone Ruins - lovely place, should be safe enough."
"Hm, OK then, I suppose I'll check those out," Stuart said as he got up and left. "Thanks so much for the drinks, sorry I don't know what currency you use here-"
"Like I said, don't fret it. Now just stay out of trouble and don't do anything stupid, OK?"
Stuart gave a thumbs up back at O'Leary as he left the pub and began to make his way back inside the cliff's caves.


************

What he failed to miss, however, was Dave finally emerging from inside the tree back on the island. The robot had recorded everything that had just happened - the strange creature, the sudden appearance of something which killed the creature, causing it to crumble to dust, and Jessica reacting with an orb released from the creature's dust state. It stopped recording, but what had transpired persisted in its memory. It saw the creature, how it greeted Dave, showed it a flower and asked if it liked them. The creature... Voidica... Voidica seemed very much like Stuart in terms of mannerisms. Then, the cracking sound, and the frame-by-frame image of Voidica's head being pierced by a scarlet beam of light. Voidica crumbling to dust afterwards. Computations ran through the robot's brain. It was aware of the First Law of Robotics - a robot shall not harm, nor allow harm to, a human being. Voidica resembled a human being, but Dave did nothing.

It hid, stared, and in doing so, allowed harm to... her...

Now, thoughts accompanied computations. Dave was... curious... It...
...he?... he...
He was curious. That led to her death. His inability to stop the stranger resulted in her death. The clips of Jessica's... anger... now appeared.
Anger...
He was... angry... angry at the stranger, for killing a harmless girl, but also at himself. But what to do? He got an... idea. Seek out the stranger. If it wasn't human, then he could destroy it - make up for its... cowardice. But wait... he wasn't a war machine, he was a... household robot. That's what Stuart called him, back when these thoughts didn't exist, when he was but a simple machine, 'a household robot'... 'that doesn't suck'! He would find a way. He would redeem himself to Voidica.

Wheeling his way over to the dust that was once Voidica, he took out a small jar, sweeped up every last dust particle into it, respectfully put the flower on the pile into the jar with it and put it inside himself. He would carry it with him as a reminder of his goal. Recalling Jessica and her pet robin entering a nearby cave, Dave went over to the entrance, and began his self-imposed quest for redemption, now more than just a machine.

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  • 8 months later...

Hip-hip-hooray, SSMB died. REPOST TIME

 

Chapter 9:

 

The darkness in the depths disappeared into the sphere of nothingness Jessica held in her hands as she returned to the three cave entrances. She thought about where to go - she knew the cave on the left was a dead end, cutting her options down to the middle and right-hand caves. She felt that the middle cave might be the one her grandad went through, replying to an inquisitive Robinson with, "I dunno, just a hunch," and went through it. As she progressed, the terrain was getting more and more treacherous - slopes and flat land gave way to incredibly rocky ground, but surprisingly there were also torches that began to line the walls of the cavern. Eventually she came across a large wall of rocks blocking her path. Looking up, she could see that there was a gap high up above the wall, which lead into another cavern, but it seemed too high for her to reach.

Fortunately, she saw some smooth rectangular rocks protruding out from the wall, and they were positioned just high enough for her to grab on if she jumped up to them. Jessica bent her knees and jumped, but to her utter surprise, she jumped twice as high as she could before! She whizzed past the first ledge and was now about halfway to the roof of the cavern, when she inexplicably felt an urge to jump again, despite still being airborne. Bringing her knees to her chest, she thrust her legs downwards. Once more to her amazement, as if she had landed on an invisible floating surface, she did the impossible and did another jump which sent her landing into the gap she, not mere moments ago, thought would be difficult if not impossible to reach!
Jessica stood still, not making a sound. Then she whispered, "Robinson... what... the FUCK... did that thing do to me?" The hints of panic and fear in her voice were all too clear from the moment she dropped the f-bomb.
"Well, er, I suppose that in addition to allowing her to make void stuff, she could jump higher too?" suggested the little bird.
"Oh, and what else, did she have super strength too?" Jessica sarcastically replied, clenching her fist and pretending to punch the wall of the cavern, "Am I going to punch this rock wall and make a dent in it?" But she thought to herself, about how she could now command the void itself, and jump higher to boot, all from that Core... maybe she could make a dent in solid rock. Ultimately she decided, 'the hell with it, why not give it a shot', and punched the wall anyway.

She made a dent. Neatly and cleanly, she made a dent. Even more miraculously, her hand, which would've certainly gained at least one broken finger bone, two cuts, a lovely wet shade of red on the outside and pain unimaginable had she tried this stunt before, was perfectly fine.
Jessica stared at her hand, her mouth agape. Her eyes darted to the dent her punch had made, then back to her hand, then back to the dent, back to the hand, dent, hand, dent, hand...
"Jesus Christ," she finally managed to get out as she turned her head towards Robinson, "you'd think if she could do this, she wouldn't have gotten killed by that purple robot thing back there."
"Hmm..." the little bird pondered, looking upwards (of course, being a robin with beady black eyes, you couldn't tell this from looking at him). "Maybe it's got some special effect on humans?" he soon concluded.
Jessica resumed walking down the cavern, which too had torches neatly standing in line on the wall to illuminate her path. There were many more twists and turns she went through, but overall there was nothing troubling she encountered.

Eventually, the pair ended up in a dead end. Yet this was one that was far from uninteresting, for there was a metallic platform present. It was circular in shape and coloured a shiny silver, with the exception of the top which glowed a dim electric blue. From one end of the platform, a thin metal pole potruded upwards, with what appeared to be a flat touchscreen stuck on top. Moving her hand to her left ear, Jessica turned her Mystiscope on and scanned it. The device displayed a page on teleporters, specifically one on the "WarpCorp R-7037" model. Looking at it, both she and Robinson were confused as to why there was a teleporter down here, a deep, hard-to-reach cave below a remote island on an alien planet, of all places. Had they known that teleporters, like most objects in the universe, have a habit of getting bored with their surroundings and disappearing somewhere else when no-one is looking so as to curb the tedium of lying in one place all day (therefore fooling people into creating the concept of "misplacing" such items), they would have found this to be perfectly natural and nothing to make a fuss about.

Jessica put her hand on her hip and stated, "Well, this looks like it's working, and if I know Grandad, the moment he sees something that looks like a teleporter, acts like a teleporter and overall shows substantial signs of being a teleporter, he'll be leaping up to try it like a hyperactive chimpanzee."
"So, you think he's gone this way?" Robinson asked with a deadpan tone. "Assuming this teleporter really works?"
"Yep," Jessica responded with a sigh, "and I'm going to make sure he's not gone anywhere leading to death."
"You do realise you yourself are likely-"
"Yes, I am well aware that this is probably going to be a monumentally stupid action that may either endanger our lives or end them outright, but hey, I feel like I've made a whole series of stupid actions from the moment I heard the words, 'Oh, and can you pop down to London and get these things please'. So at this point, one more probably won't make a huge difference."
Wisdom for the ages, Robinson sarcastically thought to himself, as Jessica stepped onto the glowing blue platform. Whenever her feet touched the surface, it emmitted an ethereal, soothing, almost aquatic alien sound. Stepping over to the touchscreen, she could see a set of controls. These too were in English, or at least Char, which thus far seemed identical to English. A set of co-ordinates were present on the screen, which were printed in Arabic numerals. Jessica didn't dare touch them - who knows where one altered digit would send her - and instead diverted her attention to a large button with "Activate" hovering over it.

But what really caught her attention was the design of the button. It was a glowing pinkish-purple and designed very much like an eye. It resembled a capital "D" angled slightly, with a thin line inside the space. It seemed to stare at Jessica, who internally realised said eye looked very much like a stylised version of the eyes of the purple robot she had seen earlier. Nervously dismissing it as coincidence, she pressed the sinister button. The blue glow intensified and grew larger, before a bright white light came and went like a camera's flash.
As their eyes recovered and adjusted from the light, Jessica and Robinson were surprised that the teleporter was not only real, but it also happened to be very efficient, as they were now within a dark room when, not even a second ago, they were previously in an underground cave. Though it was dark, Jessica could still make out what appeared to be structures along the walls.
"Robinson, can you fly up and check for any kind of light?" she asked Robinson, as she turned her head behind her and held her finger towards him.
The fluffy robin hopped out from her hood and onto her finger. "Sure thing, Jess!" he chirped cheerfully. He flew up towards the ceiling, carefully pecking around to find a light bulb of some sort, while Jessica used her Void magic to search for the possible light switch.

The room was not very large, and before long Robinson had found a light bulb and Jessica found the switch. Turning it on (nearly blinding the poor bird who was close to it before he flew back down to perch on her shoulder), she noticed that the walls were of a corrugated grey material. Rapping a wall with her knuckle made a clanging sound, confirming it was a metal of some sort. The floor also happened to be metal too, though it was green in colour. The back wall had what looked like an open air vent, far too small for Jessica to enter.
Pehaps that's how Voidica came to the island, Robinson thought.
Lining the walls were shelves, each one containing boxes of unknown content. The boxes were also present on the floor, some with mechanical pieces scattered all over the place. The ceiling had cobwebs - or at least what appeared to be cobwebs, if spiders built their webs using silky bricks. The room smelt rather dusty and dank. Clearly this was a storeroom of some kind, and the exit was a silvery shutter.
"Well, there's not much here," Jessica spoke to Robinson after observing the area, "I say we open that door." Robinson nested himself back inside her hood. Walking towards the shutter, she grabbed the bottom and pulled it up with little effort, no doubt due to her newfound strength. Light flooded in as Jessica stepped outside the room.

 

************

 

Stuart made his way back to just before the three cave entrances. He was still confused at what he'd seen, but decided he'd try to not let it spoil the prospect of being the first denzin of Earth to see an alien planet first hand. After scouting the walls, he rediscovered the red knownite wall. Stuart set his device to the microwave setting, took aim at the wall and fired. The resulting microwaves, which the device had enhanced to be more immediately lethal than the ones used to cook food, instantly caused the material to blink out of existance with a *fsshh*. Its disintigration revealed another dark cavern, this time one that went further down. Stuart, with his light ray turned on, briskly went down the pitch-black rocky hallway, going deeper and deeper into the planet's underworld. The rock began to change colour as he went deeper - where once there was grey and brown, it slowly started to transition into blue and brown. After two minutes of marching, he spotted a tunnel with light shining from outside, casting light onto some unknown structures. Without hesitation, the sixty-odd man raced towards the tunnel's end, his eagerness and anticipation intensifying the closer he got, until at last he reached the end and saw what it had concealed from him.

He was astounded by the visions that had awaited him - he was in an enormous cave which, true to O'Leary's words, contained what appeared to be the so-called Understone Ruins. The area was well lit, but curiously there was no obvious light source. Perhaps there was something in the blue rock composing the cave which gave off this light? Nonetheless, he could see long bridges standing proud high above muddy streams, ornate yet decrepit purple stone buildings ominously surrounding him, and faint alien runes inscribed onto the remnants of walls. The floor beneath him was no longer the bare rock of the caverns, but now a faded mosaic tiling which seemed to have once boasted a picture of some sort, before time and neglect left it to its fate. There was a cold, silent atmosphere to this environment, and not a soul was to be seen. Looking straight ahead, Stuart could see there was a large brick wall with an entrance in it, with a deep staircase leading down somewhere. He walked down the stairs, and stepped down into a large, remarkably intact brick tunnel, perfectly curved and leading into two different exits.The setup reminded Stuart very much of the London Underground, if there were no rails, no trains, no advertisements, no people, no rubbish, and even no rats. This tunnel, unlike the outside, had a clear light source - via a series of what appeared to be long light bulbs lined up along the walls. They struck him as if they didn't belong here, much like a person in Medieval England having access to a Walkman.

Stuart walked down the tunnel on his left. It was dimly lit with blue lights embedded in the walls, and smelt dank and dusty. His footsteps made echoes which reverberated around the tunnel walls, which was perfectly natural. What was not natural, however, was the sound of high-pitched babbling off in the distance, which immediately threw him off his stride. He stopped dead in his tracks, keeping an ear out for the mysterious sound. Suddenly, he heard it again. It was mostly indistinguishable from any sound Stuart had ever heard on Earth, but from its tone and volume relative to his distance from the source, he could tell that whatever it was that made the babbling, it was very much pissed off. Then, the sound of footsteps other than his own came quickly pounding down the tunnel, getting louder and louder until, in the dim light, he could faintly see the creature. It was spherical, only about as tall as his knee and only possessing stumpy toeless feet for "limbs", but he could also see it had a horn on its head, and for a face it had large eyes and a mouth. The face was a face that conveyed a mixture of amazement, fury, and mostly intent to kill.

It shot out indistingushable gibberish and charged hornfirst towards Stuart.

 

************

 

With a personality in his "head", Dave wheeled his way down the cavern. He had night vision enabled, so seeing in the dark was no problem for him. What was a problem for him, however, was the ground often sloping downwards, prompting physics to punt him in that direction very fast. The sudden shift in speed and vision made him feel... scared, but at the same time there was something... enjoyable about it. Out of curiosity, he tried to go up a slope, but found the task to be impossible.
"I... should... go... down," Dave's vocal circuits sparked out. Speaking independently outside of what was preprogrammed into his sentence bank was something he would need to get used to. Nevertheless, Dave continued going down, and immediately came across a cave with three entrances - going left, right and straight ahead. Suddenly, a faint sound came from the middle cave, almost mechanical in nature. Hearing it, Dave went through the middle cave. After making a few twists, Dave eventually came into a part of the cavern which was lit by electric lights. Alas, the terrain here was now rocky, bumpy and uneven, causing problems for the wheeled robot. Whenever he tried to go one way, he found himself going the other. This culminated in him tumbling down a slope in a small hole in the floor, landing wheels first into a wooden box.

Dave tried to see the box, but was caught off guard by the sound of clicking, clanking, the movement of something beneath his wheels and a new feeling becoming known to him. His computer brain now told him that he had a "Quad Adapter (Copyright Charn Authority Technologies)" plugged into his underside. Detecting circuitry going beyond his wheels, Dave quizzically sent impulses to it. He suddenly bent down and leaped out of the box, landing on the rock floor with a loud *clank*. Dave could now see that he had a machine with four spder-like legs on it. These gave him some extra height, and the ability to jump. Could he walk? He tried to walk out of the hole back up the slope, and found that it came as naturally to him as everything else he did. He looked back at the box, and saw that it looked like it had gotten lost by someone transporting several of them. At least, that was his estimate. Clicking his and clanking his way back up, he went back along the cavern. The terrain was now much easier for him to traverse thanks to his new legs.

Dave then came across what looked like a dead end, but had a gap at the top, with a series of rocks protruding from the wall. They looked wide enough to hold him, and the gap, even with his new height, looked large enough to allow him to enter. He jumped his way up the rocks and made his way to the entrance (which had a rather out of place dent on the lefthand wall). Going through it, he once more clanked his way through caverns. A few minutes later, Dave entered a cave which contained an odd silver machine with a glowing blue floor.
"What... is... this?" he asked himself curiously. Clanking onto the blue floor, Dave saw what looked like a touchscreen control panel. Extracting a telescopic arm, Dave fiddled with some buttons on the pad. Some numbers on the screen changed, but he didn't know what they meant. His camera suddenly detected one button in particular - a button which looked like the eye of the thing that had killed Voidica. His curiosity intensified and he instinctively pressed it. A blue flash quickly came and went, momentarily forcing Dave's camera to refocus.

Once it had, he saw he was in a completely different area. Where once there had been a brown rock floor, there was now grey metal. The walls were painted green, and had some red pipes placed in front of them. The quiet of the caves were gone, now replaced with faint hissing, clanking and whirring. Straight ahead of him was a conveyor belt, carrying small pieces of metal. They looked like small boxes with a hole in the top of them. Behind the belt were machines which took out bolts, placed them into the hole and screwed them in. Dave concluded that this was a factory of some sort. Stepping off the machine which he had used to arrive, he looked around him some more. The room was sterile, small, and had a single door leading out. Dave walked over to the door and walked through it. He... wondered... what else was here.


Chapter 10:

 

What greeted Jessica and Robinson as they stepped outside of the storeroom was a sight to behold. They had stepped into an expansive, deathly cold area. All matter of crates, boxes and tanks filled the empty space the room's size offered. Rows upon rows, towers upon towers, and piles upon piles. There were green girders high above them, criss-crossing into a net pattern, lights hanging from them in places where two girders met up with each other, dimly lighting the general area around them. Beyond the girders, all they could see was darkness. The dusty smell from the storeroom was now in abundance, and a dead silence had made itself known. It was quite clear that they were in a warehouse of some kind.
Jessica nervously tiptoed forward, her boots making quiet echoes as they touched the cold steel floor. She couldn't see or hear any living thing, and she wasn't certain if she really wanted to. She carefully placed her back to a stack of crates, sidestepped over to a corner and peered behind it.

Nothing. Good. She creeped around the corner, went over to the next one, and peered around that. Again, nothing. Just to make sure, she stayed absolutely still and kept her ear out for noises. But none came. She then sent Robinson out to see the area from above, just to make sure.
"Jessica, there's nothing to be afraid of, there's nobody here," he reported with a sigh as he returned to nest in his friend's hood.
Looking around, Jessica saw a large pair of wood doors, similar to the kind found on Earth. She walked over towards them, footsteps echoing throughout the room, and pushed against them. They opened up into a narrow, dark corridor, which at first glance reminded Jessica of the corridors in the Science building of her old secondary school. Before she could create a void sphere to try and find a switch, the lights instantly flickered on the moment the doors swung shut behind her.
Walking along the corridor, she saw several doors, some which lead to closets, some to more storerooms, and some, interestingly enough, leading "Up". Since she saw no exit to the outside, she assumed that this warehouse reached deep underground, and the entrance was somewhere higher up. She reached over for the door labeled "Up", when, suddenly, she heard something. And since she heard something, it was very likely it was something she really did not want to hear.

She heard the squeaking and trundling of wheels from somewhere above her. Listening closely, she heard what sounded like high pitched babbling, but what it was, she couldn't make out. The trundling grew louder, the squeaks crept downwards to her level, and the babbling came with it. It was clear that the noise maker was just past the door, and just who knew what it was? Jessica, now in a state of panic, jerked her head around intensely, looking for somewhere to hide behind. There was nothing - the corridor was positively sterile. She dashed over to the door next to her, but it wouldn't budge. She tried the next, same result.
Robinson, also panicking, took the folds of Jessica's hood and pulled them around himself, completely hiding him from view.
"Sod it," she panicked under her breath, and was about to run back to the hold she came in from, when the "Up" door swung open with a loud creak. The squeaky wheels and babbling were as clear as they could be now, if only for a second. Then they stopped. A second later, the babbling started back up, but it was now more swift, more fierce, more angry. Jessica slowly turned her head around to see what she was afraid of this whole time, and was only half shocked at what she saw.

The wheels were from a push trolly, like she'd seen on Earth. Four wheels, rusty metal frame, flaky green paint, loaded with boxes, nothing to be scared of. The ones who were pushing it, though, were something else entirely. There were two pink sphererical creatures standing behind her, one staring at her in confusion, and the other jumping up and down barking incomprehensible babble at her. They lacked limbs, except for two big featureless feet and a large pointy horn on their foreheads. They weren't terribly big, only going as high as her knees, but their horn did not make them look friendly (not helping were the angry angled-"D" eyes they had). The shouty creature then stopped jumping, let out a loud cry, then charged straight at Jessica horn first. Instinctively, Jessica kicked it square in the face, sending it flying backwards into a wall. As she looked over to the dazed alien, she didn't see its comrade leap straight at her, and did not notice it jab her arm until she felt it do so.

The pain she felt was horrible, yet felt better than how it should've been, and she quickly flung the creature off into another wall. Quickly staring at her arm, she was amazed - nothing, not even her sleeve, had been punctured. She did not bleed, despite what common sense typically shouted through a megaphone. Clearly, this was another benefit her Core gave her - increased resistance to physical trauma. Her pleasant surprise at this discovery was short lived - the first creature had regained its composure and now tried to charge at her again. It was quite clear these things wanted to kill her (for trespassing?) and that even with her newfound durability, they were more than capable of doing the job if she didn't kill them first. So she quickly generated a void sphere in her left hand and shot it at the creature like a large bullet. It struck its target, sending it flying backwards with a pained expression before it imploded and disappeared with a pop. Remembering her Mystiscope, she quickly turned and scanned the remaining creature, who now stared in shock and trembled at her. It quickly ran from the corridor and back into the door it came from, by which point the machine had displayed information:

"Implins are a race of artificially grown lifeforms allied with (and produced by) the Charn Authority. They are small, squattish, and terribly tempermental. Implins are profoundly simple-minded, only ever interested with the menial tasks they are designated with and attacking anyone they don't like (which is typically anyone the Authority doesn't like). Implins do not possess any form of culture, society, hobbies, or anything of the sort - they are, in the words of the wise sorcerer Straitand Tufehpoint, "at the end of the day, cheap, featureless, mass-produced grunts". Fortunately, they are also very weak - as one shot from most magic/weapons etc. will kill one instantly. Of course, this weakness is rendered moot by their sheer numbers and the ease with which they are made."

"H-have they gone?" Robinson asked, quivering as he emerged from Jessica's hood.
"Well, I've killed one, and the other one's buggered off," she replied. "Probably gone to tell everyone upstairs about me, but this thing says they're not hard to deal with, especially now that I'm a 'sorceress'," she responded after a few seconds, miming quotation marks. "Still not fully buying that this is magic and not some science guff, though".
"Well... I believe it's magic," Robinson sheepishly told Jessica as she opened the door leading upwards. The room was dim, but had several ramps leading upwards like a staircase would.
"You've jumped in midair, that's something science can't do," the little bird continued as they calmly escalated the ramps. "You made something from nothing, science can't do that. That core inside your body really is magic."
As they reached the floor above them, the rampcase ended. The only way out was through a door leading to another corridor. Robinson suddenly chuckled, "Hey Jess, what was that old song you like? The one you hum to yourself in the shower?"
Thinking about it, Jessica realised what he was on about. Glaring at her bird companion with a look of annoyed disapproval, she shot out, "Don't you dare bring that up now-"
"Do you believe in ma-gic, in a young girl's heart~" Robinson chirped merrily.
"ARGH!" Jessica screamed as they entered through the door.

 

************

 

Tunnels that remained silent for untold amounts of time suddenly had sounds echoed off their ancient and archaic walls. These sounds came from Stuart, who was running for his life. He had been spotted by a small pink creature with a horn on its head, which promptly attempted to attack him. He was very lucky in dodging its initial lunge, and, not wanting to harm it out of fear that it could impact the alien environment, he had used his E.M. device to stun it with concentrated radio waves while he did a runner. Fortunately for him, he was quite fit for his old age, and put a fair amount of distance between him and his attacker.
I think I've lost him, he thought, and came to a stop. Listening intensely, he heard faint alien babbling, babbling that was quite irate in tone. To his grief, Stuart heard even more irate gobbledygook, thus indicating there were even more of those things, and it was getting louder and louder. Clearly, he was either going to need a place to hide, or going to have to pluck up the will to kill something to save himself. For now, he focused on the former - no use using fairly weak microwaves on a large group. So he ran farther ahead.

Soon, Stuart came to a foreign area of the underground ruins. It was lit up with blue lighting, but the source of the light was quite clearly electrical - a light hanging from the roof. Some alien computers were there, standing innocuously, their monitors displaying surprisingly legible, yet utterly useless, data. Where once there had been ancient brick, there was now modern metal - the floor, the walls, the ceiling, the door... the door. Leading to a small room. Perfect! He wasted no time in running into the room and closing the door behind him. A small light bulb struggled to light the cramped, dark cupboard as Stuart searched for something he could barricade the door with. His eyes were instantly drawn to something - a table, with a glowing green light in a metal disk the size of a dinner plate lying on top. Stuart was fascinated, what was this thing doing here? Nevertheless, he was happy; it was the answer to his prayers! Without hesitation, Stuart grabbed the table and pulled it over to the door, blocking it off.

It was only then that he noticed the green glowing disk.

Picking it up off the table, he looked at it curiously. He had no idea as to what it could be, until he saw a button with a large question mark on it and pressed it. His head was suddenly filled with words - these too were in perfect English. "Energy Shield," he read, "Use this to automatically protect yourself from any accidents that may happen in hazardous zones. Be warned, however, that you do not take too much damage without recharging this unit, or else it will fail and you will be vulnerable." Stuart questioned this use of English on a planet far away from Earth, let alone England, but decided that if he could travel incomprehensible distances instantly using a robot cat and a slice of buttered toast, then an alien planet was allowed use a language very similar to English on Earth, and so he hanged the sense of it. Besides, he was certain he'd be needing it, what with the horde of creatures on his tail.
Noticing a button on the side of the disk, he pushed his thumb against it. The green glow lept out from the disk and onto Stuart, where it buzzed for a few seconds before falling silent and turning invisible.

The noise of the alien creatures had gotten louder and clearer now, indicating they were right outside the room. Oh feck, Stuart thought, what if they heard me just now?! Abruptly, there came a clattering and squabbling from outside as the door tried to swing open, but the table was large enough to touch both the opposite wall and the door (which opened inwards), denying access from the outside. Shortly, the commotion stopped, and the creatures had gone elsewhere in the room. Some electronic chimes emmitted from a computer, and a disembodied female voice came forth from it. The voice was startling to Stuart as he heard it from the safety of his lair - it wasn't that the voice spoke in English, he'd found that perfectly normal after seeing English writing. It was that the voice had an American accent.

"What have you lot found down there then?" it said.
The creatures babbled something that was incomprehensible to Stuart, but he was certain it was about him.
The voice gave a disgruntled sigh. "Beta, get over here and tell me what these idiots are saying!"
A second voice came into being and replied, "They're saying they've spotted an intruder. Honestly, you should start to understand Implins without needing a mind-reader around." This voice was male, and while lacking the American accent his comrade had, it had a distinctive nasally tone, which brought to mind the image of a lying, sycophantic weasel with a cold.
The first voice's attention returned to the creatures and told them, "Find them, and kill 'em. Or bring them here, I don't really care either way, just make sure they don't do anything bad, like take any equipment or what have you."
It went silent after this, giving Stuart time to regret what he'd just done, then it quickly added, "Oh, also! If they happen to have any diamonds on them, bring them straight to me. I just need a few more to complete this design I've been doing for three months."
The other voice replied, "I don't know why you're interested in those outfits of yours; Lord Charn calls the shots on who wears what under his all-seing eye."
"Screw you, Beta, I have my dreams," the now-irritated first voice shot back, "and besides, don't you have a thing to do over at Capital Minimum?"
"Not for another while, and... er, I think you should turn that off; the Implins are still watching for further orders."
"Oh, right." The voice recapped to its minions, "Find intruder, get rid of him, end of, Cassidy out," and fell silent.

After the voices ceased, the babbling resumed, only to move away from the computer room and fall quietly into the distance. Clearly, they had either forgotten he was there (if they ever suspected it in the first place) or they had gone off to tell whatever else may be in the area. After waiting for a few seconds, Stuart quietly moved the table aside and slowly opened the door to look out through the small gap it made. To his horror, there were still two "Implins" in the room, and they immediately saw him and began to charge towards him. There was nothing for it, Stuart thought, it's either them or me! He set his E.M. device to the microwave setting and fired at the creatures. The microwaves fired by the device were far more intense than those used by regular microwave ovens, and as such their effect on the Implins was almost immediate. After one shot each, the two exploded in a pop. Stuart had to find a way out of these ruins, but his mind was a buzz - he'd largely deleted his memory of how he got in and replaced it with thoughts of staying alive.
"OK, stay calm," he whispered to himself in panicked puffs, "you're largely safe, that thing you just got is apparantly a shield, so even if they hit you, it's not going to be the end of the world..."
He saw another door behind him - this one led to another part of the ruins. Whatever, Stuart thought, that way should do. And so he rushed on through it, finger on his E.M. trigger.

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  • 1 month later...

*blows dust off topic*

 

Chapter 11, everybody! Hope it's worth the wait!

 

With his new four legs, Dave strode across several clean, metallic corridors. Off in the distance, the sound of automated machinery continued to hiss and clang its way through the otherwise uneventful hallways. Eventually, he came across the end of one corridor and the beginning of some stairs. These seemed... "familiar" to him, and he searched his recent memory backups for why that was. Then he remembered it - the craft that took him to this other planet. It had stairs leading from the inside to the outside. He had neglected to notice them, and had fallen down into the ground camera-first. He had wheels then, so logically he could never have moved down (nor up) them on his own. But his curiosity was becoming more and more ingrained into his code loops, and it led him to wonder... now that he had legs, could he use them?



Dave took one of his legs and placed it on the first step. It was a successful start. Then came the next leg, which pressed itself onto the step above the first one. His motion sensors relayed an imbalance in gravity, which he corrected by tilting his main body forwards. After moving his first two legs up some more steps, he used his hind legs to leave the floor entirely and stand completely on the stairs. With strategic and calculated leg movement, Dave hoisted himself slowly but surely up the stairs, eventually reaching the top. He looked back down towards where he'd just been. He had accomplished something he could not have done previously. His processor strained as it tried to compute another alien function that Dave barely understood. The image, for lack of a better term, stuck in his memory as he tried to comprehend what it was he "felt".

That briefly came to a stop when a small pink creature came from somewhere on the floor below, and briskly ran up the stairs in far less time than it took Dave.

The creature looked at Dave curiously, and Dave responded in kind.
It prodded him with a horn on its head.
Dave took out his small telescopic arm and prodded the creature back.
It didn't take kindly to this, as it quickly babbled at him and jumped up and down. Dave recognised this as anger, thanks to both Jessica's outburst earlier on and his own newfound anger towards the mysterious purple robot. Thinking about it brought that visual back, and without thinking he instinctively thrust a broom out of one of the slots around his midsection and smacked the creature with it.
The creature was sent flying into a wall, and was briefly stunned. Dave stared at it until it recovered, whereupon it ran away up another flight of stairs and past a set of doors. He decided to follow it, going up the stairs (a task which he could do somewhat easily now) and entering the same doors.

Now Dave found himself on a catwalk above a dark room, with more conveyors and machinery creating all sorts of technology beneath him. He recognised one item as a television (or at least what resembled one), another as a kind of lamp with arms and eyes. One looked like an alarm clock with many moving metal tentacles coming from its behind. Some others, he saw, looked like giant light bulbs or containers. And then there were some things he couldn't recognise at all. Looking around some more, there was no sign of the pink creature anywhere. If Dave had known the pink creature believed him to be a defective robot running around and had gone off to its superior to raise an alert, he would've been more concerned by this (or at least, as concerned as he could currently be). Blissfully unaware of this, however, he spotted windows lining the wall to his left, revealing another room inside. A fork in the catwalk led him to the entrance; a simple wooden door. With only a thin telescopic arm to work with, Dave had some difficulty opening the door, but eventually managed to enter the room.

The room was spacious and brightly lit, and contained a complicated machine wired to some blinking computer towers. In the centre of this machine was a sleek, shiny and all-silver human-shaped robot. It resembled a little human girl, but its head was larger than its thin body, thin scissor-like claws took the place of hands, and its frame was shaped as if it were wearing a dress and heeled boots (which had wheels in them). The machine routinely flashed a green light down the object and lights on the computers blinked in response. Clunking over to another part of the room, Dave could see the computers were sending data to a production line nearby, visible through a window. Peering through it, he saw that the line was populated with several of the robot currently in the room. After the machine flashed the object, another machine on the production line flashed one of the robots inside it. The eyes on this opened up, and the line trundled onwards, moving the creation away from the machine so that the next may get its turn. Dave noticed this quirk, and another thought formed: if the robots down there opened their eyes with a green flash, why doesn't the one up here do the same? Clunking his way over to the robot, he carefully rapped it with his claw.
No response.
Dave rapped it again, this time with more force.
Still no response.
Finally, Dave shook the robot, and in doing so pulled it out of the machine and onto the floor, where it collapsed into several pieces.

Dave quickly realised he did something he was very likely not supposed to, and a new emotion struck him like lightning - panic. Running over to the window again, he saw the machine no longer emitted green flashes, and the eyes of the girl-like robots did not open, yet the conveyor still moved. He peered back to the machine in the room - despite lacking a thing to flash, it continued its regular function. Curiosity once more getting the best of him, he walked up onto the platform just as the next flashing was due. He received one and proceeded to get the hell out of there after receiving it. Though he was a robot and did not feel physical pain, his programming was scrambled momentarily from it, and with his newfound sapience, it was not a nice experience. Looking down into the line, he saw a green flash come from the machine once more, and the eyes of the object inside opened. As the line moved on, the process did not repeat for the others.
Looking further, he saw something else - the robots that had received the flash prior to his... "cock-up", as he remembered Stuart terming a similar situation, had stepped off the line and formed a row standing erect to a nearby wall. The few that didn't were quickly piling up in a heap at the end, and the one that got flashed after he had stepped into the machine was acting... differently. It looked... confused, much like Dave did after seeing Voidica get killed. It was only now that he saw an entry down to the line, which he took with little hesitation. He didn't want to stay in the room and wait for someone to see what the hell he'd just done.

Dave carefully walked down a set of stairs, and encountered the odd robot out. It was still grasping its bearings, its head slowly turning around the room and her eyes occasionally glancing at her appendages. He walked over to the lined up robots, and tried to get their attention.
Their expressions were blank, and the ones he tried to talk to merely responded with a souless, "Yes sir, what is it that you require us for?"
That is, except for the one unit he had affected, who looked over to Dave and asked, "Wh.. who are... what is...?" Noticeably, this voice was softer than the rest of its kind, even if it came out somewhat staticy and glitched.
Dave thought to himself, and came to a realisation - the machine in the room had been copying the program contained inside a template model, then uploaded it into several mass-produced models. This model, he realised, had copied not just his programming, but also his developing mind.
"Hello," Dave told the robot, "my name is Dave. How do you... feel?"
"Feel?" it paused. After a while, she replied, "I... I don't feel safe here... I-"

Abruptly, a red robot burst into the room. It had a small head (with a face made up entirely of a pair of large eyes) connected to a bulky hemisphere, which had two large, clawed tentacles poking from its sides. Attatched to the bottom was a long pole, itself connected to a single tread. Accompanying it were a set of pink creatures, the same Dave had seen earlier.
"It appears that there ha*sk* been an error in the *ks*ystem," it declared. Its voice was cold, monotone and glitched, and its sentences very to-the-point. "I have con*kc*luded that this robot here is the likely cul*pri-*," it said, pointing at Dave. "Disassemble it, as well as the malfunctioning *zer*vant robot."
"D-Dave, what's going on?" the robot girl asked, "I don't understand any-"
Dave merely grabbed her arm and sped off towards the nearest exit. He remembered what happened the last time a girl-like being met a robot within his presence, and he was... "determined", to make sure it didn't repeat itself here.

And suddenly, the entire factory was on high alert for two rogue robots, as the red robot slowly trundled after them.

 

************

In the lower levels of a warehouse some distance aways, the area was also on high alert for an intruder, but the personnel were far less prepared for, or capable of, dealing with them. Many of them were Implins, who suicidally charged at them only to get a ball of Void for their troubles. Others were simple security and surveillance robots who were innocently doing their jobs of spying on intruders (and terminating them with extreme and painful prejudice) before suddenly and, as far as they were concerned, unfairly getting blown up.
Jessica had completely gotten to grips with her powers by this point, and had made her way through several floors of the warehouse. While entering the fourth giant storeroom in the facility, she glanced at the various pieces of alien technology lining the shelves - some in boxes, others with no storage at all. She was sure that at least some of it was capable of miraculous things, but she was also sure that they could be dangerous weapons, so she wasn't going to lay a finger on any of it. Besides, her main concern was finding her granddad and getting him to take her back - if he wanted to bum around on an alien world, he could do so, but she didn't want to.

At long last, she and Robinson came across a possible way out - a large platform bathed in a solid blue light. Peering above it, they could see a long dark shaft leading upwards.
"Terrific, Jess!" Robinson exclaimed. "This must be some kind of lift used for bringing large cargo in and out - we're bound to find an exit if we ride it!"
And so, Jessica stepped onto the platform, and noticed it was translucent, allowing her to see the shaft below her. This was because it was made of hard light, and it is such a pity that, due to panic induced by her arrival, no-one had hung up a sign indicating that due to malfunctions, the platform was currently unstable and anything heavier than dust would fall through it in five seconds. If they had, Jessica would've never fallen down the long, dark shaft after standing on the platform for so long, and thus the events covered in the rest of this chapter would not have happened.

But alas, this is exactly what happened.

"AGH, OW, FUCK, SHIT, ARGH, OW, OUCH, OOOOOWWWW!!!"
Jessica's screams of pain as she tumbled down the dark, twisting and turning shaft below echoed off the tight walls. Fortunately, thanks to her Magic Core, at no point did she break anything or suffer injuries any normal human would suffer from falling down such a place. It didn't remove pain, however, so while she managed to safely land on her feet once she reached the bottom, her body was still an aching mess.
"Robinson...? *ow* Robinson! Are you okay?!" Jessica called out with concern, fearing that she may have hurt him during the fall.
"I'm alright Jess!" the plucky bird shouted back as he flew down the shaft and onto Jessica's shoulder. "When you started falling, I started flying, so I could fly down safely - are you alright?" He gently hopped his way back into Jessica's hood and puffed up.
"I'm sore, but nothing's broken - bones, flesh, fabric... brr, it's cold down here, isn't it?"
Looking around, they were in a very large, very empty, very dimly-lit and (as Jessica had noticed) very cold room. Up ahead, they saw what appeared to be a large metal sphere sitting motionless. Because of the lighting, it was difficult to make out its features, though the two could make out two sets of lights in a small rectangle and what appeared to be several cylinders mounted on its flat base.
"Big thing, isn't it? I hope there's a way back up in here-"

At this moment, the large sphere turned itself on, its twin lights flicking on with a snap. Rather worringly, an eye symbol also lit up when it did this - the same eye symbol she'd seen on the teleporter that put her in this warehouse in the first place. A panel on the top half of the sphere opened up, and a laser cannon proceeded to fire off several rounds of blasts at Jessica.
"Ohshitohshitohshitohshit!" she cried as she ran out of the way. Swinging her hand to her Mystiscope, she activated it and scanned the mechanical monster.

"The SP3R3-B0T series is one of the many models of war machine used by the Charn Authority, designed by Charn himself. The SP3R3-B0T.37, informally known as the Laserball, is one of the earlier versions and is rarely deployed circa the Tertiary Phase of the "Massacre of the Andromeda". It is, as the nickname implies, heavily armed with lasers, and comes with mirror shielding to deflect any stray laser blasts. To move around, it can also shoot high-pressure steam to launch itself off the ground for a short while. One method of disabling the machine is by exploiting its need to ventilate its laser core - forcing it to vent early and destroying the core will cause the machine's circuits to initiate a failsafe shutdown."

Jessica skimmed through the information, but she got the gist of what it could do to her, and more importantly, what she could do to it. As she ran around dodging the many lasers that appeared from the sphere, shooting Void magic at the laser cannons all the while, she noticed that the Laserball was rather decrepit. It lacked its shiny shielding, and its attempts to jump up via its steam guns were pitiful at best.
"Jessica, try the lights! Maybe they're its eyes or something!" Robinson screamed as he wrapped himself inside his would-be nest.
She rapidly shot Void spheres at the twin lights, which noticeably prompted the cannons to retreat inside it. They kept firing, however, heating up the interior for a good while before the Laserball's faces split apart, releasing hot gas and exposing a large, glowing red core in a plastic casing. That was her cue to strike! Jessica was about to fire several small Void spheres, when she instinctively tried something else. She felt large amounts of powerful nothing surge through her body, and holding both arms out, she willed it into a larger than normal Void sphere as a deep hum echoed throughout the room. She launched this sphere directly at the core, causing a brght red explosion of light to burst from it. At once, the retracted armor of the Laserball closed in on itself, and both the lights and the glowing eye flickered off.

Jessica stood in awe. She'd just single handedly destroyed a giant war machine with a large charge of Void magic. And she didn't even feel tired.
"That. Was. COOOOL!" Robinson jumped up and down on her shoulder excitedly. "That was some animé-level stuff right there; how did you even DO that?!"
"I dunno, I guess it, er, came naturally, hehe," Jessica nervously replied. She looked around the room, and she eventually saw a door. She walked towards it, and was surprised to find a lift - as in, a proper, cramped metal box lift. Though she was at first hesitant to use it, given how she'd gotten down here to begin with, she decided that at least this was a more reliable, traditional option. She stepped in, and pressed the button that took it up to the ground floor. For all the aliens and robots she'd seen so far on this planet, for some reason it was the elements that were close to those on Earth that unnerved her - how is this even a thing on a planet God knows how far from Earth?

"Robinson, I'm concerned," Jessica confessed to Robinson as they rode the lift up. "About that eye symbol, and this 'Charn' the Mystiscope keeps going on about. I've seen the eye on that purple robot that killed Voidica, d'you reckon that was him?"
The little bird stammered and stuttered, "I-I-I hope not, I mean, we just saw him... y'know... and imagine what he'll do to anyone who breaks his machines!"
"Eh, I could probably take him," she rather smugly stated.
"Let's pray to the high heavens that we never meet him in person, then."
The lift reached its destination, and the duo stepped outside. Rather jarringly, they stepped out into a small wooden shack. Opening the door, Jessica stepped outside, and was met with the fresh alien outdoors of the outskirts of a small city. Looking around, Jessica saw green grass and a blue sky, but flowers made of glass and trees with rectangular leaves.
"You think he's there?" Jessica pointed to the city, in reference to her granddad.
"Most probably," Robinson decided. "Besides, who knows just what we'll see in there anyway! I can't wait!" The little birdie hopped into Jessica's skirt pocket as the Sorceress slipped her hood up while walking towards the city.

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  • 2 months later...

Sorry for the delay, but Chapter 12 is now up! Please enjoy!

The large vehicle stood tall and imposing in the large dark cavern as a crew of small machines reenergised it, while its driver sat in the cockpit and daydreamed. Cassidy was hardly what one would call patient, especially when she was eager to drive a needlessly well-armed mining vehicle, so she dozed off momentarily. She was dressed in her typical work attire - red leotard, red heeled boots, metallic shoulder pads, a metal belt, a metal armband around her upper left arm, a (purely decorative) metal chestpiece and a necklace with the Eye of Charn hanging from it. It wasn't an outfit one would expect someone of her position to wear, but she wore it because her position allowed her to wear it without question.
She was an anomaly among the Cabinet in that she was a rather high-ranking member (head of Surveillance and Military) despite having been employed for only a few months. She managed to get where she was by pure chance - a probe created by Charn to search far-out solar systems detected the presence of life on Earth, and had travelled there. Against all odds, it managed to land silently in an alleyway in Cassidy's neighbourhood, where she discovered it staring at a dog. Fearing for the dog's life, she kicked the device so hard that it broke down... and activated a teleport beam sending her to one of Charn's many planets. Once there, fearing for her life, she lied about being the Vice Ruler of her world (which was totally not Earth) to Charn, and that she'd serve him if it meant he didn't bother with it. Charn (begrudgingly) agreed, and made her Prime Minister of Earth (obstensively imposing his laws there). Some time afterwards, however, Cassidy was promoted to her current rank - how and why, she didn't know, but she did wonder where the old head of Surveillance and Military was these days.

The machine was completely reenergised, and Cassidy prepared to drill deeper into the cavern, but her rear-view cameras caught something that she didn't expect to see - an old man in a labcoat running into the cavern behind her, looking very amazed as to where he was. Deducing he was the intruder, Cassidy climbed out of the cockpit and into the small spaceship-esque capsule on top of the machine. On further inspection, she soon recognised him, and several questions bombarded her mind. She opened up the canopy of the capsule and stared at the man.
"YOU!" she exclaimed, dropping back into her native British accent, "HOW THE HELL ARE YOU HERE?!"
Stuart turned around, and only then noticed he was behind a large vehicle that resembled a steel cheese wedge on wheels. With a flying saucer and extraordinarily large cannon with five nozzles on top of it. And a large earth-mover on the front, with a spherical window above it. His reaction was that of both amazement and fear.
"Gyah! Oh, er, sorry about that, miss, but I think there's a bit of a misunderstanding here... see, these pink things were after me, they thought I was some intruder, but I didn't mean to-"
"YOU'RE HER GRANDAD!" Cassidy screamed. "YOU'RE THE ONE WHAT MADE THAT THING!"
"Er... I'm sorry, what do you mea-"
"Don't you remember? That one moment years ago on Earth - the one with the long lines, the pine cone, the dog, the fish and that device Jess was using! D'you know the embarrassment I suffered just to make sure that dog didn't get hurt?!"
"W-w-well, I'm very sorry about that, truly I am, b-but..." Stuart was completely confused. He didn't know this girl, but she knew him and Jessica, and she was from Earth, and something happened to her in the past, which he didn't know about...
"Hang on a moment," Cassidy spoke before he could, "YOU'RE the intruder! Oh, you're so dead!" she bellowed in her false accent as she slammed the canopy down and, climbing back into the cockpit, turned the machine around so it faced Stuart.
"How d'ya like my Cannondozer? Designed it myself - 's got a cannon with five different weapons - flamethrower, grenade launcher, missile launcher, acid squirter /and/ a big-ass laser! And YOU'RE gonna see all of them!"

Stuart made a run for it, but to his horror, all the exits were sealed off by metal doors. It was just him and the young woman driving an armed vehicle with intent to kill. He was terrified - partly at the fact that someone was trying to kill him, but mostly at the prospect that he'd have to fight back against a human being - a young girl, no less.
"L-l-look, miss, I didn't mean to cause any trouble, really, don't you think this is a bit extreme?"
A sudden shot of fire from the cannon towards Stuart told him that she didn't think so. There was nothing for it - he was going to have to fight back. Setting his E.M. Device to its microwave setting, he pointed it at the large cannon and fired repeatedly. A surge of microwaves came out from the end of the device and struck the nozzle shooting flames at him. Soon, sparks flew out from it and the barrel exploded.
"What the?! HEY! You can't do that! You're an old man! You should be getting back pains from just jumping!" Cassidy shouted in disbelief, as the cannon soon began rotating. Then, the remaining four barrels all shot simultaeneously - one lobbed a grenade at him, another shot out a rocket, yet another sprayed acid on him and the final one started carving up the nearby rock with a high-powered laser. Fortunately for Stuart, his energy shield protected him from the acid, but he knew that it wouldn't last long against it and everything else this weapon had. Thinking quickly, he jumped out of the rocket's way, then picked up the grenade and threw it back at the cannon, just before it exploded. This caused sparks and smoke to billow out from the cannon, and fury to billow out from Cassidy.

"THAT! DOES IT! YOU ARE SOOOOOOO DEAD!" she screamed, as the Cannondozer began to live up to the "Dozer" part of its name and began trundling towards Stuart, very much like a tank. Stuart quickly ran around the machine as its earth-mover forcefully pushed aside the solid rock standing between it and him. Turning two cranks within her cockpit, Cassidy turned the cannon around to face Stuart, and fired its laser again. More and more sparks and smoke exploded and spluttered out from this, but she didn't particularly care. Firing his microwaves again, Stuart shot the cannon several more times. Soon, it could take no more, and exploded just as it was readying another rocket. Smoke billowed out from within the Cannondozer itself, and as the machine no longer moved and Cassidy swore up five storms while pounding her fists on the consoles, Stuart deduced he'd taken down the imposing vehicle and breathed a sigh of relief.

The saucer on top of the machine soon popped off and flew in the air, black smoke pouring out from the socket it once attached itself to. It had a bronze bottom half, with three small devices resembling baby bottles poking out downwards, and the top half was armoured purple metal that seemed to glow as if it were a dim lightbulb. On top was a small hatch, which opened up to reveal a very steamed Cassidy, who glared furiously at Stuart.
"Sorry about that, it was self defence," he calmly told the angry girl, "there's been a major misunderstanding here, I-"
"Oooooh, you got off lucky," Cassidy hissed, with the kind of subdued quietness only the truly angry can pull off. "You'd better run, old man... coz the next time we meet... KCHHHHT!" she said, swiping her finger across her neck.
"Look, miss... er... miss..." Stuart stuttered.
"Cassidy," the Surveillance/Military commander spat, her fingers clawed.
"Miss Cassidy, I'm sorry for any trouble I might have caused - I didn't mean to intrude..."
Cassidy, with nary a word, flicked up her middle finger at Stuart, slinked back down the hatch, and flew away in her machine. Stuart turned around and noticed a tunnel, revealed by the Cannondozer during the battle. He quickly decided he didn't want to stick around and ran down it. Somehow, he felt like he was going to regret meeting Cassidy, much less fighting her...

************

"All Implins, be aware: rogue robots are in the factory."
The calm, monotone female voice echoed throught the building as the two robots quickly ran through many corridors, Dave swatting aside Implin after Implin in a frantic race away from the onsurge of robots out to get them. On their tail was the red robot, who seemed more suited for combat than Dave was. They crossed catwalks, conveyors and crossings in a mad dash for freedom, but eventually, after running into a wide and large room filled with walls of boxes and crates, Dave spotted hope - an open window, leading to the outside. That hope was dashed, however, when he realised that it was far out of his reach.
The robot girl with him was horrendously confused - she'd not been active for more than six thousand ticks (or five minutes), and already she was experiencing far more thoughts than she felt like she should, labelled "rogue", and now pulled along by an odd robot not programmed into her database. As she looked at him, she felt... something, about him. She'd gained something she never knew about, something she... enjoyed. Something that made her feel... anything, really, and now she was being hounded down for it. And now here this robot is, having hardly even known her, saving her from being dismantled and recycled into electric toothbrushes that never turned on when you wanted them to, yet never turned off when they did turn on by themselves. She... liked him. She wanted to help him.

Looking around, the girl realised they were in a large storeroom, where finished products made in the factory were placed in storage, waiting to be shipped. Logically, she thought, there must be something here that can help. Her tin boots clicking as she raced around the boxes, she searched for some sort of item that could get them out. Fortunately for her, she couldn't have picked a better time for it, as the red robot burst into the room. Looking around for the two robots, it spoke.
"You are ro*gh*e products. You must *kst* be dis-as*sem*bled at once."
The girl felt... scared. Was she like that once? Cold, unfeeling? She quickly focused her attention to nearby boxes. Lamprans, Croc-Comps, Rumour Police-bugged beds... nothing was helping. She kept looking, making sure to stay hidden.
Elsewhere, Dave ran towards the robot and slammed into it, knocking it onto the ground. He decided to fight back - after all, there was nowhere he could run to. Taking his broom arm, he slammed it into the robot's face again and again.

************

Albert walked down the road. He was a stern person, with a squarish head, narrow eyes and distinguished wrinkles. Resembling a business executive in his seventies, he was sharply dressed in a black suit and red tie, had a sharp, gray haircut and was never seen without a briefcase on hand. Despite his often stern expression, today was a good morning for him - as Chief Manager of all the factories, businesses and operations controlled by the Authority, it was his job to make sure everything in them was efficient, timely, and as Charn wanted it. Today, that was the case, and he was going to get some lunch when suddenly, his pen rang. Picking it out of his pocket, he clicked the button on the end, brought it to his ear and spoke into the nib.

"Good afternoon, who is this?" he asked, with the polite, distinguished and gentle voice one would expect a human of his age to have. "Ah, Miss Polton! How are things at the factory? I think I'll go over for a check soon; I'm nearby after all and..."
Albert heard what was being said as he neared a corner, and was confused. "An accident? What sort of accide... the Servant-Girls are all piling up? Inactive? How did that.... rogue robots? And Gamma's after them? Well, hold on o-OOF!"
Albert didn't look where he was going and accidentally bumped into a hooded figure. "Oh, do forgive me, I wasn't looking where I was going. I'm kind of in a rush right now..."
"No, no, it's alright," the victim said as she staggered up, glanced at him, then walked away as the old man raced off towards the factory. As she turned the corner, she asked, "Robinson, did that alien look... 'human' to you?"

************

Dave was slammed upside down as the red robot attacked with its clawed arms. Despite its feeble and silly-looking body, it was very capable of taking a robot built like Dave apart. Staggering to his pointy feet, he stared at it with his one eye. Just then, the robot extended its hand out and opened it up.
"You leave me little cho*gh*ice, but to use my powerful *flame*thrower attack."
Dave discovered what "surprise" felt like when the robot shot a jet of water from its palm instead. The force of this attack was strong enough to knock him back down again. Elsewhere, the robot girl gasped. She felt... concern, for Dave, and feared for his continued operation. Very fortunately, she had found the "Add-On Parts" section of the giant storeroom. Surely, she thought, there was something here that could both help Dave fight back AND get them out of here. She scanned the labels, wincing as one robot tackled another in the distance. Quad Adaptors, Hydro-Dousers, Vacuum Generators, Battle Arms... Aha, she thought, those would do! Using her scissored hands, she tore open the crate in question and pulled out a set of arms. They were bulky, had built-in high-tension cords for grappling purposes, had a set of built-in gauntlets (two gun barrels on each arm), and were designed with Universal Adaptors to attach themselves to any robot.

She raced back to the battle scene with them, and ran over to Dave. "Here, take these!" she shouted, as she took the limbs and placed them onto Dave's sides, just above the ring where his various tools were stored. The next thing Dave knew, his drivers began installing new devices. Powerful electromagnets kept the arms at Dave's sides, and soon he began to feel control over them. He twitched one of three claws on one hand, swivelled an elbow, and discovered that, like his legs, he could now control the arms naturally and easily.
"AAAIIIGH!" the robot girl shrieked as she was struck to the ground a blast of high pressure water.
"You shall be melted *down* and recycled by my flamethrow*kers*." It was apparent that the poor sod was completely oblivious to the fact that it didn't actually have flamethrowers.
Dave wasted no time in trying out the features of his new arms. Thrusting one arm out towards the red robot, he shot off his hand at it. He grabbed the robot's chest and, with his hand still attached to the arm by a cord, pulled it towards him. What followed was rather savage from a robot's perspective - with his new hands, he gripped the red robot's arm and tore it off.
"BZZZKT! Impossible - cease this ac- *KZZZZZT!*" Dave crushed part of the robot's chest and tore it off, exposing its internal mechanisms. Dave then wasted no time digging into them, tearing pistons, devices and wires out of the red robot, who started to yell in its monotone, glitched voice.
"STOP THI*kt*S STOP I*bl*T," it cried, flatly. "SKZZZZZTOP KZZZZIT KZZZZZZOP BZZZZT KSSSSHHHHHHH ZHHHHHHHhhh kzzzzsssht tzzzzzzt *bzzt!*"

Before Dave was about to completely dismantle the robot, he looked up and saw the robot girl. She just stood still, with a concerned and... scared look in her eyes. That was when he remembered the last time he'd seen such a look - when Voidica was killed by... that robot... He stopped still for a moment, then backed off from the red robot. It was still active, but heavily damaged and in no condition to fight.
"Are you... scared?" he asked the girl, as he lowered his arms and started to feel scared too; scared at the idea that his single-mindedness was making him just like that murderous robot.
"I... I-I think so," she stuttered, taking a small step forwards, "but I've never felt scared..."
"I'm... sorry," Dave apologised, with a touch of gloom. Looking down at the clawful of robot in his right hand, he saw a dark blue card. It resembled an SD Card, and had a label of a water drop on it. Deducing that this was part of the red robot's water-shooting mechanism, he decided to keep it disarmed (well, not literally - he regretted tearing its arms off) and placed it inside his chest cupboard.
"It's OK," the girl spoke, walking to Dave, "but how about we leave before someone comes in?"
And at that moment, Albert came in. As his eyes looked at Dave, then the girl, then the barely-operational red robot, he was flabberghasted.
"GAMMA?!" he screamed, "A SERVANT-GI... WHAT KIND OF ROBOT IS THAT?!" he bellowed, pointing at Dave. The poor man had no idea what was going on, but he was sure of one thing - those two were involved somehow, and he wanted
"Er, time to go," Dave told the girl, wrapping one arm around her and using the other to grapple up to the window. With some struggling, the two climbed out of it and landed safely outside. The two looked around them - off in the distance nearby was a small collection of other buildings. The girl was amazed - she'd never seen anything like it.
"Oooh, can we go there?" she asked, feeling more and more joy.
"Let's, before more come," Dave replied, running as fast as his four legs could carry him.
In the factory, a befuddled Albert took his pen out. "Hello, Miss Cassidy? Yes, I have a bit of an... oh wow, you are not happy... Look, I have a small incident on my hands, could you send someone to help?... Well, let me explain first..."

************

Stuart made his way down the cold tunnel. He wasn't quite sure how far he now was from the island he'd arrived on, and he wasn't even sure of what direction he was facing. The tunnel was quite dark, requiring him to use his E.M. device's light to see. It was also quiet and empty, which was of great relief to him after his recent adventure. As he went further, he noticed the tunnel started to become more and more of a brick passageway, with a distinct dusty and ancient aroma to it. As he went even further, crystals started to appear. At first, they merely hung from the ceiling and poked out from the ground, but eventually Stuart discovered that whoever built this integrated them into the passageway itself, with entire floors made out of the shimmering minerals. The crystals themselves were otherworldly too - they glowed incandescently, illuminating the area all by themselves, and colour was of no object to them - he saw blue, red, pink, green, yellow and even brown varieties.

Before long, the passageway led to what looked like a large boulder blocking a small tunnel. In the centre was, oddly enough, a large, purple emerald cut jewel. Stuart was curious - a cut and polished gemstone embedded in an underground cave untouched by life? It didn't make much sense to him. It didn't make much sense to him either when it suddenly shone red in lieu of purple. Peering closer, he touched it. It was very cold, smooth and hard, like any gem. Pushing it slightly, he was slightly caught off-guard when it moved deeper with his finger, only to push back into place as Stuart pulled his hand back. A short while later, it changed colours again; this time it became orange. Curious, he pushed it again. Soon after, it turned yellow. He pushed it each time it changed before eventually, it cycled back to red. Suddenly, the boulder swung open, and revealed that the half that had been obscured was actually a wall of shiny bricks. Though cyan by default, they periodically flashed a faint other colour. Stuart walked in and, minding his manners, closed the door behind him.

What he saw bedazzled him - he was in a large room, made up of more of the glowing bricks and decorated with all sorts of fine crystals and gems along the walls. Throughout were tall crystal pillars that reached from floor to roof, illuminating the area with fine ambient light. To Stuart, the area looked very much like an underground palace... only with giant luminous crystals, and designed by people with more money than sense. Yet again, it was dark and quiet, but somehow far more warm and safe-feeling than the tunnel outside. As his footsteps echoed around the room, he looked around and noticed some passageways to other, similarly designed rooms. One small, dark room in particular, however, caught his attention. Eagerly racing into it, he saw a large crystal shining brightly. It was about as tall as he was, but he noticed one thing off about it - it was coming from a metal cylinder attached to the floor. Looking down, he soon noticed that there were cables leading to a small control panel. Very curious as to what it meant, Stuart went over to it and saw it had (fortunately) few buttons. One big red button caught his eye and, as he was hopeful to see if it did anything, his finger too.

With an ethereal *ping!*, akin to a spoon tapping a glass, the crystal slowly blipped out of shape and went back into the base. The bricks in the room turned on too, replacing the light the crystal previously gave out. Much to Stuart's surprise, however, a small figure made itself known as it floated over the base, seemingly having been inside the crystal itself. And it looked nothing like Stuart would have ever imagined. It wasn't shaped like a human, an animal, or really anything. OK, it resembled a worm, but he'd never seen worms made of four large, glimmering, cyan crystal balls (plus one smaller crystal ball at one end) before. On the ball that was its head, it had two large eyes with small pupils and no irises, almost like a cartoon character. Floating in place, it blinked its eyes (or to be more accurate, its irises) and looked around. Seeing Stuart, it flew over to him.
"Who are you?" it asked. Its voice was akin to a young child's - high pitched, but dreamy and somewhat sing-songy and absent minded.
"Er, hello, my name's Stuart. What's your name, and-"
"Ooh, what's that?" the crystal worm asked, staring intently at a stray gem on the floor.
"Do beg pardon, but who are y-"
"Oh, what's that?!" it sang as it glanced outside at the flashing bricks and glowing pillars. Flying outside, it darted back and forth across the area. "What's that? What is that? What's THAT? Ooh, wow, what's that~?" it asked as it looked all around.
Stuart sighed. Grabbing and holding the worm intently in his arms, he turned its head to him and asked him, "Forgive my rudeness, but what is your name?"
"Jules~," it sang, not at all caring about Stuart's rough approach.
"OK, Jules, very nice to meet you," Stuart replied, "but what were you doing in there?"
"Sealed, by friends!" Jules's tone remained ever happy, despite the dark implications of what he'd said.
Letting him go, Stuart asked Jules, "But what is this place? Why were you-"
The worm wasn't listening. Already it was dancing around the palace (if that is what it was) going in awe over what it was seeing, constantly losing interest in one thing in favour of another. He even looked at his own tail and started chasing it like a dog.

Stuart sighed. This fellow seemed to have a small attention span, and had a rapid rate of changing interests. It was going to be hard to get help from him.
"Er, excuse me," he spoke to Jules as the crystalline creature got madder and madder at his futile attempts to grab his tail, "but do you know how I can get back to the surface?"
"Island," Jules abruptly replied, stopping dead in his tracks. "Portal. Hidden. Come." His tone was more sharp and to-the-point as he flew to another room. Stuart ran after him through a corridor. Coming to a small room, they saw what looked like a door frame, but made with metal and gemstones. Jules brushed one such gemstone, and the door frame flickered, showing off another, much darker room that seemed to exist only within the confines of the frame.
"Ooh... there you are!~" he sang, going back to his happy tone.
"Oh... er, thank you, Jules," Stuart gratefully said, "Now look, stay safe - there's a bunch of rather rude people aro-"
But Jules was already off in his own world again. With more curiosity, Stuart stepped through the frame. As he stepped out, he saw he was in another room entirely. But as he found out when he started to walk out, this one was much more metallic and bumpy. As Stuart staggered outside, he soon discovered where he was.

He was on yet another island. But this time, the sky was pitch black, a bright city could be seen off in the distance, and (this was the part that amazed Stuart the most) the entire island seemed to be composed entirely of scrap metal.

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