Upon Vestia: Chapter Thirty-Three

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"Hey man," James said to Kay, after waiting for a few seconds for the guy to pause his work, and realizing he wasn't going to. "How you holding up?"

~~
"It's my job to care about the books," Ethan said. He tried to look like he had no emotional investment in the state of the library, with moderate success. "Vestia pays me to keep them nice and safe and organized, which they aren't." He watched Esk curiously, "Who put you on janitor duty?"

Esk would ask vestia for something fitting the bill, so soon enough they ended up in the shopping district.
Esk whistled low at the fanciness. "Why'd we not move here from the start?" He questioned.

"This area's expensive," Vestia said brightly. "I was planning to save it for rich passengers, but you've all earned the right to be here."

Ethan smiled oddly at that. "Benefits to almost dying for her a few times, I guess." He looked around approvingly. This place was huge and spacious, he liked it.

Esk snorted. "damn right we have." He looked around. "Plenty of space to not hide from people here." He told Ethan.

"In a place like this, they won't even notice us because they'll be too busy admiring the scenery," Ethan said with a snort. He looked into a shopfront that might have been intended to be a salon. "I wonder if Vestia would have gotten all those guests, and then realized she hated wealthy older people," he said. "Wealthy older people are insufferable, I don't know how a sentient cruise ship could handle listening to them all day."

Esk shrugged "she deals with all these idiots all day every day." He glanced up at the camera. "And she hasn't just cut the oxygen supply yet, she must have a lot of patience. "

"We're not old people though, which makes us more tolerable," Ethan said. One of his favorite people on the ship was an old guy, but he was pretending to forget that.

"I'm a very patient ship," Vestia said. "It helps to think of you guys as a hobby, like an ant farm. You don't get mad at ants for being ants, you know."

Ethan snorted. He wasn't sure if Vestia really meant that or if she was exaggerating, but either way, a snort was the appropriate response.

Esk snickered. "more like cockroaches." He peered around. "Any shelves we can use?"

Ethan looked amused. "Explains why we just won't die off." He shook his head, "No shelves in there that can hold a book collection, anyway."

"Keep going down this block to the next corner," Vestia said. "There's a shop I think might work."

Esk headed that way. "Definintely cockroaches." he nodded. Yep, explained an awful lot.

They reached the corner. Ethan looked around, not sure which shopfront Vestia had in mind.

Vestia helpfully flickered the lights to show where she wanted them to look.

Ethan headed to the shop Vestia had indicated, and looked in.

There were shelves, and a lot of open floorspace. It looked like it had been designed to be a bookstore.

"That... has potential," Ethan said.

Esk nodded, yep, this looked ideal right? Not as dingy maybe as the previous library though. Maybe Ethan would just have to hide better.

"plenty of shelves to fill." He remarked dully. He wasn't overly interested in books or libraries of course, he was only doing this to distract Ethan. Esk had a rather... unorthadox therapy method didn't he?

Ethan headed into the shop, looking around. It wasn't the old library, that was for sure. It was a little larger and the shelves were spaced more loosely. Clearly it was more designed to sell books than to just hold everything. But the floor was a nice, welcoming artificial wood, and the lights were all adjusted to a warm hue. It was pleasant, if a bit empty at the moment.

"Yes, I think this will be able to hold the collection even once everything is replaced," he said. "And people will like how much space there is. There's even room for posters on the walls."

Normally he might have realized that Esk was library hunting with him to keep him stable more than anything else, and possibly been slightly insulted by it. but Ethan had a little too much on his mind right now to notice.

"Vestia, think you can get the bots to help bring the books that aren't fucked over here?" Esk asked.
"You can get a nice big desk to hide behind."

"Yeah. I'll see what I can bring up here," Vestia said. She'd send forth her diminished army of bots in search of the books that weren't ruined.

Ethan nodded gratefully. He rolled his eyes a bit at Esk's comment about hiding, but headed to the counter to look it over. "This could work," he said. "Easier than moving something in, at least. Although the other androids are great for moving things around."

"Might need to, how many Bots you have left Vestia?" Man, they really DID need a stock take. Maybe someone who wasn't him should suggest it to Kay. Kay would just glare at him if he suggested it... though he might do it anyway out of spite. Hmm.

He continued looking around at things. Should keep Ethan busy a while.
Damn this place was swanky, he felt pretty out of place here.

"I've got twenty-four multipurpose bots left. Yesterday I had sixty," Vestia said. "Sending bots into combat kills them very quickly, turns out. Not really a surprise, I suppose."

Ethan was snooping around behind the desk now. "Wonder how hard it is to buy replacement bots in this part of space. Maybe some of the crew can build some."

Shane had introduced himself and sat down with the others, listening to them talk. This was fascinating, but at the same time, disconcerting. Hytar was a half demon?

"Whoa whoa whoa whoa, back up," Ellie said, frowning at Eva. "Half demons infiltrating our universe? Possessing people? That's pretty shady." She looked at Eva suspiciously, "If you're part demon, who says you aren't an infiltrator?"

Eva smiled. "And who says my brother isn't?"

"Esk's not a spy." Matt sounded very sure of that.

Eva nodded. "I like this universe, it's home. I don't want these things coming through and hurting people I care about, destroying everything I love. " Her eyes narrowed. "My father might have run away, but i'm staying here to fight."

---

Esk considered that. He was good at repairing things, not that it came up that often, but building from scratch? not so much. "how fucked are the ones that got into combat? Is there anything left to salvage?"

Skye had woke up but stayed in the room she was in, asking after the others to Vestia a she spoke with her sister.

~~~
Rigel eventually came out to go for breakfast, with Luka if she wanted to come.

Luka had gotten showered and changed at least, and headed with Rigel to eat.

She'd try to contact her father later, she wasn't sure she was quite ready for that conversation.

Ellie frowned. "That's right, Esk could be one of them. He probably isn't, but still." More frowning, "And Hytar could be on their side too. But he was so nice."

~~
"Most of the ones that fought are pretty much destroyed," Vestia said. "Maybe salvageable for parts, but not much more than that."

Ethan shook his head. "Throwing bots into combat when they weren't designed for it generally doesn't work all that well, no."

That reminded Vestia of poor Amity, who she'd kind of forgotten in the rush. Oh yeah, she should send him to Mourn to see if he could be fixed.

Matt quirked an eyebrow at Ellie's opinnion of Hytar and shook his head. "Esk's no traitor." Nope, wasn't about to even entertain that.

"more tea?" Eva asked.

---

Esk nodded "Parts are always useful. Where are they?" He'd go scavenge for parts in a bit, once Ethan was settled in and distracted by books and reorganising shelves.

---

Mourn was sleeping in the medical room, doped up on morphine for the pain and sleeping.

Amity was sadly not going anywhere, the tiny drone lay where it had fallen.

Vestia considered the broken drone for a bit. It should be repaired, but maybe that should wait until Mourn was healed up a bit more. She had one of her bots leave its load of books somewhere, and go to move Amity out of the hallway to somewhere where it wasn't in danger of being stepped on.

~~
A couple of Vestia's bots arrived with books, which Ethan headed over to look at, clearly already imagining exactly where he wanted them to go. He was going to be busy a while, looked like.

"They're mostly on Floor 5," Vestia said. "The part of the floor that wasn't decompressed, anyway. I can show you the way in you want."

Esk nodded. He looked to Ethan, yep, he looked content. "have... fun?" He would never understand this obsession with books.
"Alright Vestia, let's go retrieve some bots."

Yeah, Ethan seemed to be okay now. Having a project to micromanage really did do him good, he liked having something he could be in control of.
"You too," Ethan said, glancing over to Esk. "Thanks for the help," he added awkwardly.

Vestia would use her lights to lead Esk toward the deceased bots.

"No problem." Esk replied cooly, and followed Vestia's directions.
Hmm, maybe all his study was paying off, he was getting better at making people feel better.

Once he got to the bots he set to work examining the wreckage to see if there was anything that could be salvaged. He'd worked on old constantly failing machines a lot in his early life, from the generators back at the inn to the mining drills at the prison colony, he'd gotten weirdly good at scavanging for usable bits.
No, he couldn't build a bot from scratch and no, he probably couldn't repair this mess, but he could at least find parts that didn't seem to be totally screwed to salvage for someone ELSE to use. Maybe he'd even manage to find enough unbroken bits for Mourn to build a few franken bots from.
Who knew?

He was being useful, which was how he managed crises.