Upon Vestia: Chapter Twenty-Two

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(Starts on day 15 at the Guild, I believe)

Kay nodded slowly. [We'll still need supplies though. But there must be some fortified and defendable buildings in the city. Ones that don't look like hospitals.] Yeah he didn't believe the family wouldn't just blow up a hospital.

"The supplies that are easier to obtain can be stored in each location, so they don't need to be moved. The more valuable stuff can be brought in by supply runners. Maybe an artuvian, or even someone who can teleport, like Matt." Asher nodded. "We definitely need buildings that don't look like they're hospitals. Shop basements, maybe. With magical warding, as well as subtle physical reinforcement if possible."

[Let's go see what we can find.] Yes, an outing, that would be a distraction.

"Yes, let's have a look around. 'Oh hello, we love your shop, can we borrow it for a while? We'll need to change the interior decorating a bit, we hope you don't mind'," Asher tried to joke.

Kay smiled weakly. [That's assuming people are still trading as usual. I expect a fair few have already evacuated.] He looked grim. The calm before the storm, it was awful.

"True. I suppose nobody will mind much if we borrow their empty shop at this point," Asher agreed. "We may have a lot of options available."

Kay nodded and lead the way. This was going to be well.. interesting. Not good interesting though. He wondered how many people were actually staying to fight and how many had already fled.

Asher followed Kay out.

(To the capital!)

TIMESKIP - DAY 27 - AFTER THE BATTLE

Vestia was alive and unharmed, since she'd avoided the fighting entirely. She was very, very worried about her passengers though.

She was half relieved, half horrified when an anamcara carried Asher up the ramp. After a flurry of questions, she got Asher a wheelchair and the anamcara helped him in, before leaving to go help in the city some more.

"Please, no more questions," Asher begged Vestia.

"Okay," Vestia said apologetically. Poor robot must be tired out.

Asher smiled weakly at her camera, then focused on learning to use the wheelchair to get to his room, so he could attempt to wrestle his armor off of his frustratingly unresponsive legs, and hopefully pull on some new clothes without any help. He really didn't want to need help. That would make this even more miserable an experience than it already was.

Also he needed to patch up the hole the acid had burned in his skin, so the wires wouldn't catch on something and start an electrical fire. Ugh.

As the smoke cleared, some people made their way back to the Asteroid Manifest to find their friends and shipmates.

Armin, having slept through pretty much all that battle very very carefully made his way back, escorted by a couple of Anamcara who'd left the bunker to survey the damage.

Swarm, or at least part of them, also returned to see if they could find anyone there.
They were searching for the crew.

Eventually everyone from Vestia and the Silver Devil would be brought back to Vestia, once their condition was stable enough to allow that. People who were mostly okay were taken to their rooms, those in more dangerous condition went to the med bay.

James was on med bay duty, yay.

Tala was taken to her room. Ellie was mostly okay, so she wanted to stay near her friends, and probably near the med bay. Ethan stayed near the med bay to try and be useful, although he kept looking at Kay oddly.

Asher had managed to change into regular clothes and patch up his stomach somewhat, so he wheeled his way over to the med bay when Vestia told him people were returning.

Shane was alright, but he would need surgery to get the bullet out eventually, for now, he was stable enough to just rest.

Dawn would stay basically comatose for about 24 hours before she would wake, still tired, but mobile after that long rest.

Skye was alright, but she had to get a bath to get the black blood off of her. Bruises would heal in time.

Rigel was fine, he hadn't gotten hurt at all even when he finally got to fight when freeing Skye.

Starr...was nowhere to be found.

Kay was exhausted, but there wasn't much more he could do. he was relieved when he heard the others had been found, well.. most of them.
There was still no news on Starr but right now he was too tired to fear the worst. She was Starr, she was the toughest of them all. Besides, it was still so chaotic, she'd turn up... right?

He shouldn't be still working, tired as he was, but he insisted on getting everyone settled in to the med bay.

He froze when he saw Asher in a wheelchair, eyes widening.
[What happened!?]

--

Matt was out cold, the medics had done a decent job stemming his bleeding and stabilising him but he was unlikely to be able to walk for a while. While they were fairly sure no permanent damage had been done, he had taken quite a blow to the spine. He was lucky the armor had deflected the worst of it.

Esk was weak and looked half dead. His eyes were sunken, his complexion slightly grey and he could barely walk. He didn't seem to want to leave Dawn's side, mumbling something about owing her.
He did look relieved to see Skye though.

Mourn didn't care much about his own bruises, he went straight to work on trying to fix Amity and would, if James asked, offer to help fix his arm too.
He hissed under his breath when he picked up the little drone, eyes narrowing. Bastards shot the hologram, how dare they!

Luka was fine, tired, worried for her friends, but fine. She tried to pitch in and help whoever needed help.
She was worried about Dawn, and Esk who looked about ready to just keel over himself.
"I'll sit with her." She reassured him. "You should try to rest."

Begrudgingly, Esk crawled off to a bed and passed out again.

Swarm settled in to rest.

Hewitt had to be helped back to the ship, and sat in his room recuperating. he did tell Vestia to keep him informed of Mourn's progress on the drone though.

Armin, though still tired, came to help wherever he could. Bringing people drinks, dressing wounds and he'd even bathe foreheads.
After a while though, he would ask. "Where is Miss Starr?"

Asher looked like he'd seen a ghost for a moment when he saw Kay, then he was relieved to see him alive and not apparently injured. Yeah, Kay looked exhausted, but it could be worse. So much worse. "A keeper found us on the rooftop," he said quietly. He was reluctant to mention a few relevant details here, so he settled with, "Ethan managed to save my life."

James came over and hugged him brother, one-armed. "Oh my gosh man! Ethan, why didn't you tell us?!"

Ethan frowned. "It didn't seem like information you needed at the time."

Asher nodded. "Probably a good idea. It would just be distracting."

James glared at both his brothers.

Ethan looked defensive, and stomped off to go get someone some water.

~~
"I dunno, I haven't seen Starr in a long time," Ellie said, frowning.

Kay looked to Ethan, then Asher. He wasn't sure what to say.
He came over to Asher. [How bad is the damage? Can you walk at all?] yes, he was going to bombard him with questions okay?

---

Armin frowned. Troubled by that. He silently prayed to the weaver that the dragon queen was alright.

"The damage is fairly bad," Asher said. "My legs don't work at all. My upper body is working fine though," he forced a smile.

James looked horrified. Asher wasn't supposed to ever get hurt! He was supposed to be lucky!

kay's frown deepened. [How do we fix it?] There had to be a way to fix it right? Androids were repairable, they weren't squishy and fragile like organic beings, they could be repaired!

"Judging by my sensor readings, I'm going to need some special parts to be repaired," Asher said. "Nothing we can manufacture ourselves." He looked glum. "I may be in a wheelchair for a while."

Rigel frowned at the conversations he was hearing "Special parts would mean your 'owner' would have to order them, and she's missing."

Kay bit his lip, nodding. At least he was alive. It could be a lot worse.  [I'm just relieved you're.. mostly.. okay.] He hesitated, then reached down to hug Asher. It had been a seriously stressful day okay? He looked to Rigel, frowning deeply. [Who saw her last?]

Rigel shrugged "I was in the Devil most of the fight, so I didn't see her after she downed a ship and landed.

Asher returned Kay's hug uncertainly, it felt very different from normal hugging. He let go fairly quickly. "I'm glad you're all right too," he replied. He looked worried at Rigel's remark.

"I saw Starr about the time that big explosion happened," James said. "Then she headed off to fight somewhere else while I helped the hawk boy."

Rigel frowned at that "Which way did she head to? I can go and search for her." Yeah, he wasn't that much good with medical stuff and he was unhurt, so it was logical he went to search out of them. "She could be unconscious somewhere. Or helping people."

Kay nodded. [There's still scouts searching the buildings and those ships for survivors. She could even still be stuck in one of hte hospitals, it's absolute chaos out there still. More people on hand to search would be helpful. Tell the peacekeepers and anyone else who might be searching. I'm sure we'll see a lot of missing people in the coming days.] There were still so many parts of the city to search and so many bodies to identify. He shuddered, he didn't want to think about Starr being one of those bodies. No, she was tough, she was strong, she was alive. She HAD to be alive.

James told Rigel which way he'd seen Starr go. "She could have gone pretty far in any direction though," he said, "so who knows where she'd be now."

"We'd be very grateful if you'd look for her," Asher said to Rigel. "Her chances are good, but we'd like to know for sure where she is."

Rigel nodded to all they said then touched his temple in a wry salute before heading out. Yeah, even he doubted the dragon queen was dead, just missing.

Asher smiled gratefully at Rigel as he left, then looked to Kay. "You should go rest," he said softly. "And you should go get yourself fixed," he added to James, "I can look after the med bay for a while."