"Ugh...." Ester groaned to life from where he lay on the ground, his eyes seemingly welded tight as he peeked at his bright surroundings.
"What the void just happened...?"
Opening a pair of bleary eyes, he noticed from a corner of his mind that the lights had remained on, so either Eva forgot to turn them off 'doubtful' or he hadn't been unconscious for long.
Ester would bet on the second one if his body didn't beg to differ.
"Ack."
Grimacing as he peeled himself up and off of the ground, Ester felt his flesh slowly rebound out of the idents formed from his rather uncomfortable rest atop an arm made entirely of metal.
Very boxy and not comfortable to be slept on metal at that.
Grunting as he pried himself away from the ground with heavy limbs, Ester looked around and briefly noted the place was messy, messier than usual.
'Oh yeah.' Ester grunted and remembered what he was doing before his abrupt awakening on the ground. 'I just finished adjusting the Gravitator. Since I'm still alive then that means I succeeded... Right?'
Rolling his arms, Ester's eyes briefly leapt over the workbench and towards the engine where Eva was no doubt working in right now, eventually landing on Eva's prone body.
His heart leaped into his throat.
"Holy!?" Nearly jumping out of his skin, Ester clutched his chest wondering why in the Thirteen would she be lying on the ground in such a compromising and heart pumping position.
Then he noticed the dried crimson red around her face and his heart really got pumping.
"EVa!?"
Voice cracking in his mouth as he instantly slid towards her, he briefly acknowledged his knees getting ground against before grabbing her by the shoulders.
Swiftly shifting her weight so that she was resting flat against the ground, Ester's eyes crawled across her features marred by the blood leaking out of her eyes and the corners of her throat.
Ester cursed 'Fuck! What the Void happened?!'
Hurriedly placing a finger against her neck, Ester felt a weak pulse of life echo against his hands like a dying battery.
'Damnit! Okay! What do I do what do I do what do I- Medicine!'
Dashing towards the medicine cabinet, Ester opened its insides as his vision briefly turned blurry.
Hurriedly blinking away the blurriness as he tore through the medicine cabinet, without even looking at what he was taking, every single bit of aid that they had gathered over the years were swept up in his hands.
Dumping them all roughly against the ground, Ester kneeled besides Eva and picked up the medicines up and set them down in emotionally fueled actions.
'Damnit! What the Void happened to her!'
Biting at the cap of an antidote cap, he pushed her hair aside and found her metal covered neck.
Tracing a path down to her collar bone, he found the medicine patch where all things not food would be injected.
He stabbed it in and pushed the plunger.
*Hissss
Hissing as the antidote was pumped into her blood, Ester tossed away the antidote with nary a second glance and pulled at... whatever the hell else that they had, a myriad of thoughts running through his head.
'What the Void happened to her? Why is she bleeding? Why isn't she awake? Why is she so pale? Why? WHY?'
His heart roared into his ears.
Plunging more cures and drugs into her bloodstream than he could name, all of which that wouldn't interfere with each other, Ester grabbed the last drug at the very bottom of the pile and hesitated.
It was a thick glass container filled to the brim with a speckled grey fluid of unknown origin.
The only thing that Ester knew of it was that the old man told them that it was a life saving device that should only be used when they're in mortal danger.
Whatever Eva seemed to be going through definitely seemed to meet the criteria.
Making up his mind and moving to plunge the unknown fluid straight into Eva's blood stream, the person in questioned groaned causing him to pause midway.
[Ghha-agh E-Ester?]
Opening a pair of reddish storm grey eyes sealed shut by crust formed from the bloody tears that seemed to have run down her face, a crackling voice entered Ester's ears.
[Wh-what the he-e-e-e-llllll]
The distinct breaking of her voice box came from the surprise of Ester suddenly pulling her into his embrace.
Arms dancing as if trying to understand what was happening, they eventually settled for awkwardly trying to pat the back of the person hugging them.
If it wasn't for the fact that a certain arm of metal could quite literally bend metal, she would've been a lot less forceful in the patting.
[Ester! Ester! Back! Hurting!]
Smacking Ester's back as he suddenly let go, Eva grunted with slightly wild eyes as if trying to ascertain what day it was.
[I know I'm beautiful and all, but why are you crying?]
"Hm?"
A pair of pants suddenly found itself on Eva's head as Ester got up off of the ground, hurriedly wiping his eyes with newfound embarrassment.
"What the void are you talking about?"
[You know damn well what I'm-]
She paused.
[Hey. Ester.]
"...Mm?"
Still busily covering his tracks by throwing more and more clothes at Eva who let herself get buried whilst hiding the cures in various corners of the room, what Eva said next stopped him in his tracks.
[Why am I able to speak so clearly?]
"..."
[...Bring me to the desk]
Raising her arms and letting Ester pick her up with ease, they swiftly moved across the small space as he set her against the captain's seat.
Instinctively getting comfortable as she did, Ester grabbed a bundle of wires hanging off to the side and began to plug them into a rickety looking helmet.
Old and outdated as it looked, there weren't many pieces of Runeware that could withstand the fall from atmospheric heights.
And if they did, it was usually through an absurd amount of luck and high durability.
High durability found mostly in older Runeware interfacing devices.
Eva grabbed the helmet from Ester's hands and set it against her head, the visor lighting up with yellow light as the lights themselves flickered, the electricity flowing through them being diverted to power the Runeware model something.
Hands grabbing at the Runeboard in front of her and typing at blinding speeds, Ester recalled the past.
From as long as ten years ago, Eva was only able to talk through the shitty speaker he had scrounged up from a med bay.
Heavily modded as the mouth piece was, the pieces needed to make the speakers were always to delicate to survive the fall.
And since the technology to make such delicate pieces was never dumped onto this Architect forsaken planet, they had to make do with whatever they got.
This usually meant speakers that had an incredibly choppy and crackly output no matter the input.
But all of a sudden the speaker was suddenly perfectly fine?
Something was wrong.
Watching as the numerous lines of Rune code ran through the screen like a city being built up from the ground up, Ester tapped her shoulder to let her know he was going to go do something else only to get waved off.
'I don't know what happened, but she should be able to puzzle it out.'
The device that converted her thoughts into something that the speaker could understand ran on rune code after all.
"I'll... try to deal with why you-" Ester hurriedly corrected himself when he noticed her twitching shoulder "-I mean we were bleeding."
He turned to look at the inside of the Driller, more specifically the section where he had awoken besides a fainted Eva.
He wasn't stupid.
Far from it since stupid was what got people killed.
And because he wasn't stupid, he was able to piece together why he and Eva were bleeding in the first place.
'We pulled at our Inner Aether.'
He felt his chest where the distinct feeling of hollowness came to him.
It was as if someone had taken a spoon and carved a hole into his heart except the someone in this case was his stupid self doing the carving.
So not as smart as he would like to be since the usage of inner Aether wasn't recommended when Aether was available.
Not that he could've abandoned his modifications to the Gravitator to retrieve more Aether crystals. They would've died from the Gravity core shredding them into thousands of tiny pieces otherwise.
In this case with the usage of inner Aether, although they would have lots of sudden chest pains and lots of internal bleeding from now on, they would live.
Maybe.
Life on the trash planet made survival a non guarantee
'One more reason to escape this architect forsaken place.' Ester absentmindedly thought before slapping the sides of his neck, noticing that his right arm responded a beat slow.
'Oh yeah, it also runs on my inner Aether.'
And with it all being used to modify the Gravitator, the arm was currently running on what little Aether that he naturally produced and what little Aether flowed in from the atmosphere.
And since it was an incredibly polluted one, the Aether flowed into his body like a viscous oil making him feel sick.
Not to the point that he couldn't stand it yet, but something like an itch you just couldn't reach.
'Night night.'
Turning off the arm and letting it fall flat against his side, Ester felt one of the aforementioned chest pains attack him in that moment.
Flinching slightly, Ester sat down and pulled the modified gravitator towards him. His eyes peering at the flower of death and steel.
'So this is what it looks like after I tear the Aether right out of my flesh huh?'
Briefly noting the Ashy grey Aether intermingling with Eva's Stormy grey Aether on the Gravitator's glyphed surface, Ester looked it over.
It was... beautiful to say the least.
Like a miniature planet covered in storms and ashy whirlwinds, the flowing Aether currents whirled across the glowing shell following the numerous lines intercrossing with each other.
No. Now that Ester took a closer look at the thousands of lines, he noticed that they were actually Glyphs squished into a thin line.
'What the?'
Turning to look at the hundreds of other swirling currents masking the entire thing like a model of the Trash Planet's weather, just like he had suspected
'No wonder I had to draw my inner Aether.'
Ester felt a twinge in his flesh as the oily Aether slowly seeped inwards and settled right back in his body before it was oh so rudely ripped away.
'I don't think I would've been able to fuel this creation without Eva.'
Glancing at... he didn't know what to label the legless madwoman, she was currently typing away at the Rune board while muttering something not so crackly.
It was weird to not hear the distinct crackle of her voice box.
Shaking his head and returning to his own discoveries, he hesitated for a brief moment before picking up the Gravitator
Feeling the distinct tingle of his Inner Aether and Eva's inner Aether tingle against his fingertips as he held the modded gravitator, Ester gulped down his saliva, a manic grin approaching his face as he glanced at his pet project.
'Architects I never thought I would be completing this damned thing so soon.'
A normal Gravitator unit would serve as an expensive and crucial navigation piece in every single space faring vehicle, something that it still could do modded as it was.
This modded Gravitator unit covered in so many glyphs that it appeared more planet than planet compass had an additional function added to the aforementioned planet compass.
Instead of just locating celestial bodies, it could locate anything if programmed correctly
Rifts to the Weave? It could find it.
All the living beings in a radius of five thousand kilometers? Why ask?
Intact Runetech buried under thousands of pounds of plastic? Ask and you shall receive.
The door to someone's basement? Weird choice, but it could theoretically find it.
All he needed to do was just slot this modded Gravitator into a special device he had all the joy in making, and they would be able to find anything that they wanted.
'Maybe even a way off of this Architect forsaken planet could be found.'
Grin threatening to split his face in half, Ester picked up the Gravitator core and brought it closer to the shell of the special device.
'Welcome to life Allseeing, I'll be in your care from now on.'
+++
Then an Earthquake happened at that exact moment causing Ester to drop the Gravitator due to lack of two hands causing the gravitator to unlucky gain a crack on its shell.
And the rest is history.
Including a sizeable portion of the planet.
Tree