Upon Vestia: Chapter Twenty-Three

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"You have a tablet at least, right?" Asher asked Dawn.

Kay nodded. [Have you made any useful headway?]

"Not a lot," Asher said. He smiled a little, "Honestly, the Terran Declaration of Sapient Rights is the most useful document. But the history of Cyborg rights could be useful to cite, and there are some property laws that can probably keep police from searching my memories, too." Keeping the Terran Empire from learning about Starr was a pretty high priority.

Kay nodded. [I wish I could help more.] but yeah, terran law? not his strong point. at all. Law in general really.

Asher smiled softly. "It keeps me busy, and once I have some idea when I'm actually going to start this campaign, I'm planning to speak with someone from one of the Sapient Rights groups. I'm sure they can offer plenty of legal advice." He glanced one more time toward the books, then headed for the adventure section.

Kay nodded. Wow, Asher really had this figured out didn't he? He was simultaneously impressed and worried. The closer they got to Asher starting his campaign, the more danger he'd be in.
He pushed those feelings down and followed Asher to the adventure section.

When Asher had first decided he'd wanted to try and free the androids, he'd optimistically believed that the mission would be simple, with few casualties and relatively little danger. Somewhere along the way from the Family to the mirror universe, his faith had been pretty badly shaken. He knew the risks now, and he was going to do his very best to minimize the danger to his people, his friends, and himself. It was no fun, but he wanted to do the right thing for once.

For now though, he wanted to read to Kay, because it would be nice. He got to work looking for good (read: cheesy and slightly melodramatic) books to read. This was better than thinking about the deaths of thousands, no doubt about it.

Kay would pull up a chair and settle down, head on Asher's shoulder while he read. A nice bit of silly escapism, yet please.

Asher would read to Kay for quite a while. They both needed something nice and optimistic to imagine for a while.

(Wanna skip forward in time to get that message from the Tiger?)

(yessssss)

(Okay, Esk's surgery was April 16th, Starr revealed her eggs April 20th. I think. Do we wanna do anything else before skipping forward four or more days?)

(Not personally. Starr?)

(I have no plans)

(Okay, guys! *Pulls lever*)

TIMESKIP - APRIL 21

The past few days had been largely quiet. The medics, to varying degrees, looked after Esk. James had wrenched his arm at some point and Mourn had to fix it again. The Guild had a very subdued full moon festival. The crew continued to wait for news from the Celestial Tiger, which had been gone for several weeks now.

~~
Asher made it his job to try and keep Kay distracted as necessary. This was actually a good thing, because if he was being useful to Kay, then he was less likely to feel worthless! Yay.
But currently he was off doing some research about Terran law in the library.

~~
James was near the med bay, waiting for anyone to need fixing. He was also debating sticking his arm in a sling so he'd stop wrenching it by accident.

~~
Ellie was being Ellie. That is, she had bought some magical holographic glitter and a cool hat in town, and was just finishing decorating it in the crafts closet.

Dawn had done as she said she would and taken her test. This morning she got the results back in a message on her tablet. She looked to Vestia's camera then back to her tablet "The results are already back from my test" She said, nervously. She hadn't opened it yet.

~
Skye went out to the city to fly around a while. She was bored without her sister or the babies to keep her distracted. She didn't know what to do with herself with so much time on her hands.

Esk had been slowly recovering, after a couple of goats his incision had mostly healed, leaving a nasty angry looking scar to add to his collection.
He was still weak but getting stronger by the day as his body recovered from the massive trauma, and he'd been given the go ahead to eat regular food, just still no alchohol.

So he was currently eating chips on the observation deck, watching the goings on below them on the asteroid will dull disinterest.

---

Mourn had been tinkering away with Amity, trying to figure a good way to integrate his systems with the new body they'd built.

----

Armin had put all sewing on hold to continue helping around the guild, but being on his feet so much of the day had irritated his bad leg so he was limping a lot.
Today he'd taken the day off, not entirely at his request, and he was resting up with a notebook of design ideas.

---

Hewitt was BORED. He went for a walk.

---

Matt was trying to take it easy but it was hard. He was bored out of his mind, he missed Thalia and the kids, he missed being able to walk and generally felt useless and miserable and was starting to struggle to hide it.

Kay didn't much want to deal with Esk, so he'd left the care of his younger brother to Dawn and James, who had the patience and a level of dare he say it, trust, from Esk. Instead he was devoting his free time to his older brother who he knew needed company.

They were at the pool currently doing some physio work. Being immersed in water always improved Matt's mood and it allowed him to move his legs without damaging his back.

A couple of messages from the Tiger would arrive. One went to Esk, with the message about contacting his father. The other would arrive only a few seconds later, was addressed to Vestia, and it said only to meet at the place where they had left Matthew.

Vestia contemplated her message uncertainly. It was from the Tiger crew, but it said so little. Was Starr with them? Was she dead? There was no way to know.

Esk frowned at the message, why the hell did they want his father? Shit, did that mean rescuing Starr was harder than they'd expected?
Could they even trust the old bastard not to kill Starr in order to get to the slavers?
The guy was pretty blood thirsty he felt.

He looked up at Vestia's camera. "Did you get a message from the rescue party?" Maybe they'd told her more.

"I just got a message, they say to meet them where we left Matthew," Vestia said. "They didn't say anything else, so I guess they're trying to make sure nobody who intercepts the messages would learn much. What does yours say?" She couldn't read his tablet from here.

Esk read it out, what little of it there was. "How soon can we leave here?"

Skye returned from her morning flight, going to get cleaned up after.

"I'm fit to fly whenever," Vestia said. "We'll need to ask the crew if they have anything they need to do." She snickered, "We should call a meeting."

Esk groaned. More bureaucratic bullshit? great. "Fine, call a damn meeting. let me know how it goes." He settled back in his chair, yeah he wasn't going to no stinking meeting.

He instead considered the problem of contacting his father. Damnit, he'd have to talk to Mourn about getting the contact info for the Celestial Tiger.

Still, they must have a damn good reason to want to talk to Hytar. It bothered him.

Vestia called a meeting.

Asher frowned and left his studies to see what was happening. Could it be something to do with Starr?

James abandoned the sling he had been considering for his arm, and headed for the meeting place.

Ellie took her hat, put it on, and went to see what was up.

Dawn and Skye left what they were doing to come to the meeting. Dawn was smiling happily while Skye simply looked curious.

Kay helped Matt out of the pool with the help of some of the pool bots and they both dried off.

"What's this about?" Matt asked Vestia as Kay went to get their clothes.

Matt could move enough that he could mostly dress himself, but it wasn't that easy and was gonna take a while.

--

Armin eased himself out of his hammock and came to see what was going on.

---

Mourn came to see too, curious if nothing else.

---

Hewitt rolled his eyes but he came to see what this was about anyway.

---

Esk stayed where he was, feet up on a coffee table.

"We got a couple messages from the Tiger, they gave us a place to meet with them," Vestia told Matt.

Once everyone--minus Esk--was together in the meeting room, Vestia explained the contents of the two messages. "They said nothing about Starr, only that we should meet them where we left Matthew, and that Esk should get his father for something," Vestia said.

Asher frowned. "They're being very cryptic. I hope Starr is all right."

Ellie nodded unhappily. "We should go right away, we need to see what's going on."

Kay frowned. [Why would they want to involve Esk's father?] Wasn't he all kinds of evil?

Matt shook his head "That doesn't sound good to me."

"Perhaps they simply require his assistance with something. " Armin suggested.

"Yeah but why HIM?" Matt asked. "And where the hell IS Esk?"

Kay looked troubled. [I agree with Ellie.] He never thought he'd see the day, huh. [The sooner we get to them, the sooner we know what's going on.]

"Who is this man they want to get into contact with?" Hewitt asked.

"Bad news." Matt told him.

Kay nodded grimly.

Armin clasped his hands, bowing his head and desperately praying for the safety of Miss Starr.