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?"

Tala blinked. She didn't fully understand Luka's thought process here, whether this word was some obscure word in Galactic Common, or some obscure word in Satare. And she couldn't see whether it was written in runes or whatever either from here.
"I am glad you have solved this mystery," she said, because she wasn't that curious about fully understanding the situation herself. Humanoids and their letters, so odd.

Luka beamed, pleased with herself.
"I'm going to go find Dawn." She decided. "She should have this back."
She nodded to Tala and went to find Dawn.

Shane took the drink as he looked to his friend. "That's not something to be proud of. I wish we had been wrong about her." Wishes wouldn't fix this though, nothing really would. Not with him being soul-bonded to her.
~~~
Starr was sorting through things and making a pile of trash to be taken away.

~~~
Dawn was making her way down to the 3rd floor. She was kind of glad she had moved to be closer to her medical bay, but sad for the others. She was bringing a kit in case anyone got hurt while searching

Tala went back to work, looking a little confused still. Luka made no sense, but it was nice she was happy about something.

~~
Ethan saw Starr and went over, normally he'd probably be avoiding everyone, but he did kind of want to talk to Starr. "Hey," he said. Best way to announce your presence if you were socially awkward like he was.

~~
Ellie might go in search of Shane and Matt, carrying a couple pamphlets and the letters.

Matt sighed. "I dunno, maybe I should listen to you guys more." He poured another drink and stared into it miserably. "do you think she resents me? our daughter... for being gone so long."

Matt and Shane weren't hard to find, they hadn't moved from the bar.

---

Luka found Dawn. "I found something I think is yours!" She declared, getting straight to the point.

Eventually James would probably try to talk Mourn into resting. He wanted to do a little more investigation on Floor 3, and he also wanted Mourn to recover faster.

So Mourn sleeping was the best possible option, right?

Mourn nodded and waved James away. Sure sure, he'd 'rest', if rest meant fiddle with electronics for hours. Well at least it distracted him from the pain, that was something right?

Starr looked to Etan and gave a small smile "Hey, what's up?" She asked, wondering why he had come to find her.

~~~
Shane took a drink of his glass then shook his head. "Not if she was told the truth now that we are back." He said with uncertainty.

Dawn looked to Luka and smiled a little "ello Luka, what did you find?" She asked curiously

Matt frowned. "ten years is a long time..."

---

Luka held up the letter. "It has your name on it." She explained, offering it. It was just a plain white envelope, sealed, with a word in neat runes on the front.

James wasn't convinced Mourn was going to get around to sleeping, but he decided that wasn't really his problem, so he headed off.

He'd head to Asher's room to check on everything for the guy. Turned out most of the stuff in there was okay, some electronics project involving a slightly burnt and very dismantled tablet lay on the floor partially crushed under a fallen table desk though, and there was a pool of skin adhesive on the floor that had dried into a gummy puddle.

Fun.

He left that for now, he could clean it up later.

He'd get back to picking up salvageable objects, and maybe he'd stumble across Esk out there.

Not literally, hopefully.

~~
Ethan smiled oddly. It really didn't looked natural today, but it was the thought that counted, probably. "Thought I should say hi, and congratulate you on killing that keeper," he said. "I'm glad I got to see that." He thought killing evil keepers was a good day's work, something to be congratulated.

~~
Ellie found Matt and Shane in the bar at that point. She wandered over, listening to what the two were saying instead of immediately announcing herself. Maybe she was a little nosy.

Esk was carefully picking through things and yeah, probably would come across James.
he nodded faintly.

---

Matt was too distracted by his drink and misery to notice Ellie, bah.

James smiled lopsidedly at Esk. "Hey man, how's the project going?" Looks like you were pretty busy while I was off delivering stuff to Mourn."

Esk shrugged. "Found some stuff. I'm gonna need tools to get into the freezer though, it's jammed." Annoying.

"I can help if you want," James said in an odd show of not-laziness. "We could probably find some tools in the shuttle bay or something." He looked curious, "You gone snooping in anyone's rooms yet?"

Esk snorted. "I'm not opening drawers, I don't wanna know what's in them." Yeek. Just... yeek.
"You rifling through people's underwear are you James?" He smirked.

James snickered. "Nah. Well, I got some stuff for Mourn and I checked Asher's room a bit, but I don't think that counts." He shook his head, "I'd rather someone else do the snooping, and then tell me all the juicy gossip. Less dangerous."

Esk smirked. "what, you think some of these guys trapped their drawers or something?" Now there was an idea.
He shook his head. "found anything useful?"

"I meant more in the sense that the crew would probably murder me if they found out I'd been spying," James said, shaking his head. "People here aren't like Acus, they don't usually set random traps everywhere, but the do love their privacy."
"Nothing really useful, no, unless you're a computer programmer geek, in which case Mourn's room is a total goldmine. Not that he'd let you take anything regardless, I'm sure."

Esk shrugged. "Let's get that freezer open then."

James nodded. "Sure thing. Should be good fun." They'd go in search of tools, probably there was something useful in the shuttle bay, if not closer.

Esk followed along. The might even have the cut through the damn hinges, who knew. it was annoying.

James got some sort of metal cutting tool, and something they might be able to use to lever the door open. He wasn't totally sure what they'd need, but he figured that was a decent place to start.

"Have you tried to get in touch with your siblings out there yet?" he asked conversationally. Siblings were kind of on his mind today.

Esk's expression remained blank. "no. I have nothing to say to them."
Harsh.

James glanced at Esk, a little startled in spite of himself. Esk really did have a strong dislike for his family, James always found it a little confusing. "Okay then."
He'd back toward the freezer with Esk and their various tools.

it wasn't so much that Esk disliked his family, more he didn't really much care. He barely knew Web and Jess? well jess had abandoned him, twice, which wasn't something you really got over that quickly.

"I assume you've contacted yours?"

James nodded at the question. "Yeah... well Asher contacted me technically. But we all got in touch. It's weird getting ten years of news about what your family's been up to. I mean, it's kinda crazy how long ten years is if you think about it." He shook his head.