After my conversation with Stove, Dirt and I head back to the village square to meet up with MacWillie and Huckens, Dirt barely able to keep up with my now energetic stride. Without anything else to do, it looks like the two engineers have been enjoying an extended breakfast.

"Well you certainly look better," MacWillie greets me as I take a seat and snag one of Huckens' breakfast wraps.

"Hey!"

I ignore his outraged squawk and gobble the entire thing down in two huge bites. There's more at the serving table, and I'm famished. After I swallow, I take a second to respond.

"Talking with one of the Minds usually does that. They're very good at helping everyone deal with bad thoughts."

"So next time I see you moping around like the lad trying to learn Imperial measurements-"

"Hey!"

I snatch the other breakfast wrap while Huckens is distracted.

"-I should tell you to go see one of your 'minds?'"

I grin sheepishly at MacWillie as Huckens storms off to get more food.

"Yeah. That would probably be a good idea."

Duly noted.

Dirt taps me on the shoulder as I take another bite, and I look up at him.

"I am going to get some sleep, Sky Idiot. If you decide to leave the village again, please tell Broom so she doesn't wake me up. Tell her to wake Torchie instead."

"You got it, Dirt. Sorry I kept you up all night. Thanks for coming to look for me."

That sunshine smile peeks out from beneath his exhausted face.

"Of course, Sky Idiot. You make life interesting."

He walks away from the table, heading to his house on the village outskirts, and Huckens returns with another three breakfast wraps. He peers at MacWillie and I suspiciously, then puts his plate on the table, arms held protectively around it. I ignore his odd behavior. I have apologies to make.

"I'm sorry, MacWillie, Huckens. You too, Box. I should have listened to you last night instead of trying to do everything myself. You were trying to help me and I didn't let you."

"Aye, it's fine young Sky," MacWillie replies softly, running a scarred hand through her short hair. "It's a stressful time to be sure, and there's no one perfect out there. Think no more on it."

You don't need to apologize to me, Sky. I'm here to support you in any way I can. That's one of my core tenets, remember?

"I did say you were probably going to die," Huckens lifts his hands from his plate to stretch, "but I'm glad you didn't."

snatch snatch snatch

Huckens looks down at his empty plate, then up at me and MacWillie, both of us with a breakfast wrap in our mouths and innocent expressions on our faces.

sadness. not fish

A half-eaten wrap flies out of my shadow and bounces off his forehead, landing neatly on the plate. His mouth twists through a range of emotions, then he regards the wrap glumly and picks it up.

"Your cat's shite. You're shite." He takes a bite. "You're shite too, Chief."

"Chin up, you'll see worse in the engines."

Huckens glares at her as he finishes his wrap, the two of us chortling around our own last bites. I turn to MacWillie with a sense of confidence filling my chest, so different from our meal last night.

"Okay, so you said I should retrieve the 'molecular forge' first?"

"Aye," she nods, "once me and the lad have that beauty up and running your Box can put together a better weapon or two for you. It'll take some more scavenging materials from the hulks, but nothing out of the ordinary."

"And that will help me get strong enough to recover the incognito field components?"

Using modern weaponry and armor, the violations in the upper cruiser wreckage will be difficult to defeat, but not impossible. With some careful planning and judicious use of non-causal expressions, we should emerge successful.

I tap my fingers on the tabletop.

"But will we have enough time?"

"Aye, assuming nothing changes in the logistics requests, and so far they're holding steady. I'll be keeping an eye on them while you and the lad retrieve the forge."

Huckens and I stare at her for a second, and I'm sure my expression mirrors his own.

"What do you mean-"

"-me and him?!"

MacWillie laughs in our faces.

"A molecular forge is a heaping big thing, young Sky, and you're going to need some help dismantling it for transportation, not to mention carrying it back. What's your non-causal storage limit?"

"...fifty kilograms, whatever those are. How did you know I had one?"

"Every combat variant does. Handy place to keep your gear, and you'll definitely need the lad then. He can stick the rest of the parts in his satchel."

"But Chief-"

"Don't you 'but' me, young master Huckens! It's about time you got your hands dirty without me there to babysit your every move." Her voice drops. "Time's coming up where you'll be on your own, anyways. You need to learn how to tune an engine properly before I'm gone."

A momentary silence shrouds the good mood.

"...okay, Chief. If you think I can handle it, I trust you."

"As you should, you impertinent little pipsqueak! I'm not dead yet!"

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Huckens rolls out of his seat to dodge MacWillie's cuff, smiling slightly as he springs to his feet.

"Getting slow, Chief. Sure you're not dead?"

"Why you little-"

MacWillie rises from her chair, roaring. Huckens scrambles around behind me, using my body as a shield.

"What are you doing?" I splutter, his hands warm against my upper arms. He laughs breathily in my ear.

"Trying not to get killed. We should leave before the old bag figures out how to hit me through you."

I eye MacWillie's raised palm, tree trunk legs rapidly closing the distance, then decide that Huckens might just be right in this instance. I use two of my limbs to shoot myself backwards off the chair, the third one shifting Huckens to land beside me, and then we're running away from the irate Chief Engineer, villagers gawking at the commotion.

"You bring my apprentice back alive so I can kill him myself!"

"Tell Broom where we went," I call back, Huckens chuckling as he sprints beside my casual jog. We barrel out of the village square, heading towards Fishhook once again, and his laughter quickly turns to panting breaths as we enter the forest proper. Before we're halfway to the edge of the treeline, I accelerate slightly to get in front of him so I can bring us to a halt.

"...I need to carry you."

Huckens scowls at me from his hunched position, hands on his knees, deep breaths shuddering his body.

"I'm... fine..."

I roll my eyes.

"You're obviously not. We have another..."

108 kilometers

"-to go. We've covered..."

Half a kilometer

"-so I need to carry you if we're going to get there and back in a reasonable amount of time."

Huckens eyes me from his bent over position, then winces, clutching a hand to his side.

"...fine-"

I immediately cradle him in one of my limbs, legs bursting into full speed with my other two limbs assisting. Bone-white trunks and ruby-red leaves flash past in blurring smears, and then we're out into the foothills leading to the distant mountain range.

"-whaaaaaaurrppp."

I try not to think about my limbs collecting the minuscule amount of extra biomass Huckens just expelled. We need to get that molecular forge to protect the village. Fortunately, he manages to settle his stomach as I settle into a bounding rhythm, dashing at the peak of my hurtling leaps to squeeze out more momentum.

"This... actually isn't that bad? Better than helping the Chief muck out a clogged waste pipe. It's still some bloody weird shit, though."

I look over at him during another weightless fall, timing my next dash to send us down the slope at the perfect angle for my two other limbs to maintain our velocity.

"I'm just running."

The mountains draw closer in visible lurches, Fishhook's curved peak dominating the morning skyline despite its reduced size. Grass and dirt and scrub pass in ephemeral touches on the ground below, and Huckens scoffs.

"Sure you are. I've heard of level seventy or eighty combat variants moving this fast, but you..."

I wink at him, doing a backflip just because I can, reveling in the sensation of speed.

"I'm modified."

The rest of our journey passes in silence, the morning sun rising another few notches overhead. Eventually we arrive at the base of Fishhook, only this time, instead of clawing my way up its slopes, I scan around for the earthbound wreckage of the cruiser, trying to recreate the chaotic kaleidoscope of the previous battle against the Entity.

It's over there.

A waypoint appears in my vision.

"Thanks, Box."

I bring us to the ridge of a rise overlooking the monumental debris of the cruiser's middle section. Massive chunks of oddly curved metal spill across the slopes in front of us, dirty furrows of churned earth carving twisted scars across the grassy folds. Oily shapes prowl and slink amongst the towering segments, snapping occasionally at each other in disruptions of reality. I recognize them, the same horrific forms that attacked me and Wires.

Weak. These extrusions won't pose a challenge.

One of the abyssal creatures crawls up next to the sightless interior of a cruiser segment, and a reality-spiked vector of force impales it to the ground, greasy mouth snapping and snarling as the violation perishes. A humanoid figure briefly emerges, segmented body armor the same as the previous Marauders I fought, then vanishes back into the shadows.

...but that's concerning.

"Are there still survivors in there, Box? Can we help them?"

No, Sky. There's nothing human left in that wreck. That was an integrator in preservation mode.

"...'preservation mode?'"

The host is braindead, likely from one of the Entity's attacks, and the integrator is trying to keep everything functioning in case its environmental cues return to a recognized setting. We're programmed to persist.

"...that's-"

-a regrettable outcome? Entirely so. We'll have to clear them out if we want to salvage the materials MacWillie needs. Hopefully there shouldn't be any high level integrators since this was a covert ship, not a mainline warship.

There's more I want to say, but I don't have the words to encompass the enormity of my feelings, so all I can do is exhale. Next to me, Huckens squirms a bit in the limb holding him.

"So, uh, what's the plan? Leave me here while you go clean out the place? Because I think that's a great plan."

He needs to come with us. I am detecting several anchors in the surrounding environment, and there is no telling if more violations will appear.

"Can't we just get rid of them first?"

Their power levels are... concerning. I suspect they may be nesting in portions of the cruiser the Entity was consuming before it was banished. We should make the forge our primary focus and come back for them after we obtain the incog field components.

"Box says you should come with us," I tell Huckens, his face confused at my one-sided conversation. "There are big anchors around here and it's worried they might find you."

"O-okay. What am I supposed to do?"

Try not to die?

"Box says stay close and we'll protect you."

I set Huckens down and my limbs manifest my weapons - pistol, rifle, and kukri. The chestplate I looted from the Marauder the other day appears in front of me, Box retrieving it from non-causal storage, and I quickly slip it on. Huckens licks his lips nervously, then reaches into his satchel and pulls out the same two metal tools I saw him fighting with when the Entity attacked - 'quarter inch spanners,' MacWillie called them.

playtime

Pete steps out of my shadow, a predatory mass of midnight fur nearly as tall as my shoulder. His tail lashes in and out of existence, sometimes splitting into additional copies, and his mismatched eyes gleam with entirely too much intelligence. Huckens looks at the cat and gulps.

"Sky, is your... 'cat'... bigger? And creepier?"

The extra reality from the trees had to go somewhere. It's not my fault.

Pete rubs up against Box affectionately, then swipes a small corner off almost playfully.

Augh! Blasted thing!

"Pete, leave Box alone. Also, try and protect Huckens, okay?"

maybe

I shake my head, then look over at Huckens.

"Ready?"

"Y-yeah."

"Let's go."