08-29-2016, 04:08 PM
Carmelita’s rest that night was, thankfully, dreamless. She didn’t think she could handle another.
Chip was tapping her plate impatiently throughout eating breakfast in the control tower, barely disguising her excitement at getting the whole garage put together for her to use. Al3x made a few jokes about it which she brushed off, but Carmelita couldn’t help but feel a bit of contentment at seeing the girl this excited. She could still picture the scrappy state the tri-eye had been in when they’d met, as well as the eventful night during the search for the Mech Depot, and seeing the young woman so full of life definitely brought the mood up.
After finishing breakfast, the three of them headed out into the early sunlight to repair the patrol car enough to float it into the compound. Since Carmelita had summoned the thing herself, it wasn’t much effort to recollect how she’d constructed the propulsors and soon the burnt out wreck had been gently brought to rest in the hangar, next to the only wreck of a mech left in the facility.
Chip couldn’t help but bust out music she’d found on the dataverse, a light, jovial dubstep that built up to an epic crescendo. As Carmelita focused on making Al3x’s holograms a reality, pouring out her omnilium to form sheets of metal, bins of nuts and bolts, racks of tools, car jacks, hydraulic lifts, mechanical cranes, electric saws and many more items, Chip was literally dancing around, stroking a hand over the finished products and already assembling all the tools she’d need to fix up both the mech and the cruiser.
They stopped at midday, after Carmelita had restored the air-conditioning. They cranked open the hangar doors and let the sunlight illuminate the garage fully, the cool air a delightful relief. About three-quarters of the garage was done, and all that was left for Carmelita to restore were the big mech stations and the truck lifts. They grabbed some dry sandwiches and some fresh water from the mess hall and sat, with Al3x’s avatar sitting in a space on the shelf above them, and took a long look out at the dunes that lay in the distance.
After they had finished eating, Chip got to work on the patrol car, fixing up the internal parts and getting to grips with all the new tools she had to play with. A soft flow of ambitious plans swept over Carmelita’s ears as she finished her work, returning to lean against the rusted mech in time for Chip to start the patrol car once more and for her to gesture for Carmelita to restore the aesthetic it had originally had.
Her patrol car restored, it occurred to Carmelita that she had, in fact, left another in the Town With No Name. She mentally made a note to return there and retrieve it once they had finished the base.
---
That evening, Al3x and Chip were discussing plans for the workshops. While they did so, Carmelita took a walk out to the open space outside the garage and lay on her back, relaxing her mind and trying to recall the memories from Dante’s Abyss. She could remember all the details up until the rest in the forest now, and snatches of detail from afterwards. It was as she was thinking that the memory of her death finally came to her.
Hiro’s face, looking shocked at the bloody hatchet he held, had been the last thing she’d seen.
She brought up her dataverse connection on her earpieces, and began typing out a message to the hacker.
Chip was tapping her plate impatiently throughout eating breakfast in the control tower, barely disguising her excitement at getting the whole garage put together for her to use. Al3x made a few jokes about it which she brushed off, but Carmelita couldn’t help but feel a bit of contentment at seeing the girl this excited. She could still picture the scrappy state the tri-eye had been in when they’d met, as well as the eventful night during the search for the Mech Depot, and seeing the young woman so full of life definitely brought the mood up.
After finishing breakfast, the three of them headed out into the early sunlight to repair the patrol car enough to float it into the compound. Since Carmelita had summoned the thing herself, it wasn’t much effort to recollect how she’d constructed the propulsors and soon the burnt out wreck had been gently brought to rest in the hangar, next to the only wreck of a mech left in the facility.
Chip couldn’t help but bust out music she’d found on the dataverse, a light, jovial dubstep that built up to an epic crescendo. As Carmelita focused on making Al3x’s holograms a reality, pouring out her omnilium to form sheets of metal, bins of nuts and bolts, racks of tools, car jacks, hydraulic lifts, mechanical cranes, electric saws and many more items, Chip was literally dancing around, stroking a hand over the finished products and already assembling all the tools she’d need to fix up both the mech and the cruiser.
They stopped at midday, after Carmelita had restored the air-conditioning. They cranked open the hangar doors and let the sunlight illuminate the garage fully, the cool air a delightful relief. About three-quarters of the garage was done, and all that was left for Carmelita to restore were the big mech stations and the truck lifts. They grabbed some dry sandwiches and some fresh water from the mess hall and sat, with Al3x’s avatar sitting in a space on the shelf above them, and took a long look out at the dunes that lay in the distance.
After they had finished eating, Chip got to work on the patrol car, fixing up the internal parts and getting to grips with all the new tools she had to play with. A soft flow of ambitious plans swept over Carmelita’s ears as she finished her work, returning to lean against the rusted mech in time for Chip to start the patrol car once more and for her to gesture for Carmelita to restore the aesthetic it had originally had.
Her patrol car restored, it occurred to Carmelita that she had, in fact, left another in the Town With No Name. She mentally made a note to return there and retrieve it once they had finished the base.
---
That evening, Al3x and Chip were discussing plans for the workshops. While they did so, Carmelita took a walk out to the open space outside the garage and lay on her back, relaxing her mind and trying to recall the memories from Dante’s Abyss. She could remember all the details up until the rest in the forest now, and snatches of detail from afterwards. It was as she was thinking that the memory of her death finally came to her.
Hiro’s face, looking shocked at the bloody hatchet he held, had been the last thing she’d seen.
She brought up her dataverse connection on her earpieces, and began typing out a message to the hacker.