UPON VESTIA: CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

First topic message reminder :

Asher considered his words for a few seconds, glancing around the room as he thought, then looked to Kay again. "I've been thinking over everything that's happened today, and I feel like it would be wrong for me to leave Terra before the androids have been granted their freedom," he said. "I think it might be in the best interests of the children and the androids if I stay on Terra while Vestia goes on to the Imperium." He wished he could have phrased it better, but he just didn't know how. Ugh.

Tala glanced at Ivor. "You fear me," she remarked. The guy kept cringing, it was kind of obvious even to her.

~~
Celia took the pen and paper, and started writing out the information. It was going to take a bit, there was a lot to write out.

~~
"Yeah, man," Ellie said. "Truly this is a good day." She petted a snail for emphasis.

Ivor ducked his head. "i.. i'm sorry..."

"Scared of everyone." Silence told Tala dismissively.

Ivor stayed quiet.

---

Mourn waited impatiently, hopping from foot to foot.

--

Matt snorted. "wish we could understand em though.."

Tala nodded. "That will pass," she said, as if it was obvious that it would. "You will find that I am only violent to those who seek to cause troubles, not to those who are peaceful by nature. And the rest of the people, well, they are not as frightening as they seem. And your other form has excellent talons." She apparently thought this would be reassuring to Ivor.

~~
"I know, right? What's with that?" Ellie shook her head.

Ivor cringed. "M.. my other.. f..form?" What did she know of his other form? he looked alarmed.

Silence looked amused. "People here weird." She remarked. "But don't seem threat." certainly they didn't think anything other than thinking she was scary looking. That kind of amused her. She liked being scary.

---

"too abstract maybe?" Matt suggested.

"The one with the talons. You can change, can you not? You smell like the medic and like Silence," Tala said. She nodded, "We are no threat, so long as you do not attack. There is nothing strange about that, it is simply common sense not to hurt those who do not hurt you."
They reached the shuttle bay.

~~
"Yeah, must be," Ellie agreed.

Starr nodded and reached for a notebook, pulling out two pieces of paper and a pen to hand them over to Celia. "There you go." She said with a smile.

~~~
Dawn nodded and looked at him again. "I'm not mad at you, and I accept your apology." She said, getting that out of the way then looking down and sighing. "I'm sorry for avoiding you too."

~~~
Shane smiled and looked around, going to pick a flower and bring it to the snails to see how they reacted.

Celia would write up the information, handing Mourn the decryption information, and Starr the locations when she was done. "Again, I can't guarantee that the androids will end up at the places I tried to send them to, but hopefully some will end up there eventually," she told Starr.

~~
The snails would flicker their shells in different color patterns at the sight of the flowers, and extend their eyestalks to look more closely, but wouldn't try to eat them or anything.

"Thank you Celia.Do you know if you will be staying with us yet?" She asked curiously.

~~~
"Well, that's interesting." Shane said with a small shrug.

Celia frowned in thought. "I'm not sure. Mourn found me a room here, but I'm not convinced this is where I want to be." She didn't really want to give all her trust to these people. They seemed nice enough, but she didn't want to rely on them like that.

"y... yes..." Ivor nodded. "b.. but... scares people." He glanced to Silence. "d.. don't look like sister..."

"half breeds always funny looking." Silence nodded.

---

"can go anywhere now." Mourn nodded. "when robots free, even more option."
He looked at the paper, eager to get started on that.

---

Esk hesitated, then nodded. "alright." He lapsed into awkward silence.

"You have nothing to fear though, with all those spikes. Being frightening is an asset, not a flaw," Tala said grandly. She shook her head, earring swinging with the movement.

Silence grinned.

Ivor looked uncertain. He shook his head. "p.. prefer.. this form..." He managed, looking uneasy.

Tala shrugged. "The option is there if you ever need it. Most of the time intimidation isn't necessary, but one day you may be glad you have your other shape."

Starr shrugged and nodded. "Yes, it is your choice to stay or go, though I would like it if you stayed."

~~~
Dawn sighed and went over lightly touching his jacket for a brief moment before letting her hand drop. "You are my friend, like it or not. I won't let you push me away and I won't leave you."

Celia didn't know what to make of Starr's remark, her paranoia made her wonder if Starr was possibly going to threaten her or something if she left. Being in a human-like, vulnerable body for the first time was pretty stressful that way. She looked uncertain.
"I like the idea of independence," she said, nodding at Mourn's words. "Vanishing for a while and reappearing once things get better sounds good to me." To Starr she added cautiously, "You want me here?"

Esk flinched away from her touch ever so slightly, pulling away from people was habit. He frowned at her, she was a weird girl. He didn't know what to say to that. To be honest, he didn't really believe her. People always left eventually. He looked away "yeah.. sure.." He replied flatly.

---

Mourn nodded "soon." He went back to reading the paper and making sense of it.

Starr smiled softly at Celia then shrugged a little. "I like making new friends and keeping those friends safe. You are a new friend. You can choose what to do, though if you stay you should certainly take precautions at least until this freedom matter is settled."
~~~
Dawn tilted her head then sighed and turned to go back to her chair to sit. "I won't, not if I have a choice. I'm staying with Vestia though. She's my home now." She had finally decided that for certain.

The decryption information was written out in very neat handwriting, with all the steps explained clearly. Mourn should have no trouble using it to decode the files.
Celia frowned at Starr, "You barely know me. That... doesn't make sense." She shook her head. "I can stay out of the public eye. I've lived a million and more lives, I took knowledge from all of them. I know better than most how to disappear." Then again, the situation was different for her kind now, and the old rules weren't going to apply so well now. Hmm.

Esk nodded, he'd figured as such. Honestly he wasn't sure any of them would want to return to the devil long term. It was a useful ship but Vestia was comfortable and more like a permanent place you could live. "Have you told your uncle?" He asked.

---

Mourn wasn't paying attention now, he was eager to get to decrypting. "You talk, I find computer." He told Celia and Starr.

"We have known you longer than just these few weeks, through my son, Asher." Starr said and smiled softly. "Your actions have been for us as much as for your people, it may not be entirely logical, but you are a friend in my mind." She said then looked to Mourn to wave 'bye' to him if he was even paying attention.

~~~
Dawn shook her head then shrugged a little "I will, soon, I only decided for certain recently."

Celia smiled at Mourn. "All right. I recommend uploading it to the internet, trying to get as many people to download it as possible so MegaBrain can't wipe it away."
She looked at Starr again, startled at her explanation. "Your son? I figured you must be unusually fond of him, seeing as you sent a bodyguard with him. But not like a son, I don't recall anyone referring to an android that way before." People befriended or fell in love with androids from time to time, got invested in their happiness, started treating them as people. But calling an android their son was something new to Celia.

Mourn nodded and wandered off to go decrypt this info and read through it.

---

Esk looked at Dawn. "You decided a while ago, you just didn't notice." He told her. Setting up that farm and all that was definitely, in his mind, setting up a home long term.

Starr smiled then shrugged a little "I love him as a parent would a child, so I made him my son when we first freed him. I want him protected and free, as he is on this ship, but able to go wherever he wishes without harm too."

~~~
Dawn dipped her head then shrugged a little. "Anyone could run the farm, setting it up was a way to not have to stop if we had to run for any length of time." She said then thought about the medical bay, that was more for her than the farm had been, more of a stake in her staying. Maybe she had decided back then and just hadn't thought it through yet.

Celia frowned, she was used to being the only 'parent' the androids had. She wasn't close to any of them any more, she'd been around long enough that they'd all kind of blurred together and she'd numbed herself to their suffering, but still. It was weird seeing anyone else choose that title. "Well," she said after a moment, smiling a little, "That's an unusual but nice sentiment. Good for you, and for him." She shook her head, "I don't think I'll stay here, but I'm glad you're keeping him safe."

~~
The file wouldn't be hard to decrypt now Mourn had the instructions, although as usual it would take a while since it was pretty huge.
Once opened, the file would prove to contain a lot of conversations between important people in the company, from the last fifty years or so. Footage of discussions of how to avoid the androids' sentience being revealed to lower level employees, how to convince employees who'd figured it out not to care. Emails from the initial proposal to create sentient androids, and how to avoid word getting out. Videos of plainly terrified Six series androids being brought in for deactivation. Lots of other phone calls, emails, video clips. Yeah, it was pretty damning. Hopefully the Terran Empire wouldn't be too blind to see it.

Esk nodded. "It's comfortable here." He reasoned. "More space, better food, more protection. There's safety in numbers." Was he seriously considering staying here long term too? Maybe a little bit. Certainly if the captain decided they would use Vestia as a base he wouldn't be opposed to the idea. And if he got qualified as a therapist would he even want to go off with the devil on adventures? He'd started to get tired of his nomadic lifestyle, it was lonely. Much as he generally disliked people, he still craved social interaction, he couldn't help it.

---

Mourn watched all this with a grim look on his face. He'd seen rather a lot of horrors in his life, this wasn't anything overly new. He sighed and looked up relevant people to send this to.

Press, politicians, police, whoever he thought might have some sway or ability to get this out for all to see. He also would upload it to all social media under multiple accounts so if one was taken down the others were still there. He selected the most damning bits for that, the videos were particularly helpful as they were hardest to fake.

He'd spend the afternoon emailing people, uploading footage, writing on forums and sharing the heck outta a large chunk of this stuff, keeping copies of all the nitty gritty stuff like emails and reports for later. He made sure to hide his IP, using his hacking skills to disguise his identity. No doubt the assumption would be he was an ex employee and he was fine with that assumption.

---

Ivor didn't look so sure about that but he nodded obligingly.

"You good fighter?" Silence asked Tala.

Everyone was discussing the protests now, so the new information Mourn shared publicly would be quickly picked up and re-shared a lot. It was unlikely that MegaBrain would be able to scrub all that data off the web, there were too many interested people trying to make sense of what had just happened. Before long, many of the more neutral or android-friendly news outlets would have published what Mourn had given them. Politicians, press, police, and the general public would all be messaging Mourn, if they could, with questions about his identity, the information, and probably literally any other question they could imagine up, relevant or not.

Yep, this was definitely making a splash.

~~
Tala nodded, looking pleased. "I am a most satisfactory warrior and have won many battles. It is good to be able to protect those who you care for, and fighting for hire pays well." Priorities.

Mourn wasn't about to reveal who he really was, he was intentionally vuage about the source of the information coming from a "former employee at the highest ranks" which was technically sort of true. Right?

He sat back, pleased with himself for the chaos he'd sown.

---

Silence tilted her head "can teach?" She asked.

"w.. what?" Ivor looked alarmed. "You want to learn to fight??!"

Silence nodded "Protect self. Not like before." her eyes narrowed.