#it's another set of hell!

[chronologiical]

my future grand saber

[thatone-highlighter]

I love you albums. I love you songs connected by similar themes. I love you listening to songs in a specific order picked by the artist. I love you reoccurring motifs throughout the same album. I love you album covers. I love you albums with extended editions. I love you songs that reference each other.

[goozeghost]

art block a bitch so here's a shiddy traditional doodle of a certain construct while i try to remember how to draw 😔💔😓

got some new lining pens tho so art block fears me. 🤞

[thebestusernamepossible]

People who don’t get the pregnancy motif in Severence and then turn around and get mad about it drive me crazy. ITS THE LOSS OF AUTONOMY AND RIGHTS SHOW! ITS THE MAKING A NEW PERSON TO CARRY YOUR BURDEN SHOW! Of COURSE pregnancy is a theme. It’s not like the show is being weird about it?? Do we not trust the show runners?? If Helena is pregnant I fully expect them to use it as a horrific plot point! If it’s the direction it’s going to be full of horror and plot twists (probally back alley abortion via Helly tbh. Bc you KNOW Helena would use Helly to give birth like that one Senator lady did).

[rsenak]

something something 'your coworker keeps mentioning there arent enough onions so you offer to get some the next time youre in a city. he tells you to get good ones but you realize too late that you have no idea whats the difference between a good and a bad onion'

this was a lot funnier in my mind before i spent 3 days working on it ._.

[rockpaperscissuhs]

HBO WWII Rewatch | Week 9 - Green

[cloudysarts]

🤞

[gingermintpepper]

For the longest time, the quintessential song describing Apollo's wrath and consequent murder of Coronis for me was Marah in the Mainsail's 'Your Work isn't Done'.

It's dark. It's seething. Its image of Fate pushing the scorned speaker to complete his foul, terrible work of killing the man who stole his lover away from him is particularly powerful and it's always evoked this gruesomely tragic evolution of a glassy eyed Apollo stumbling through the streets, weak-legged and trembling from the betrayal growning more and more wrathful 'til he can think of no other course than to aim his bow and shoot. The price of betraying his trust is death and Coronis betrayed so much more than just his trust by taking Ischys as her lover.

The song itself captures that sensation of building wrath so well too. From the lonely guitar and vocals at the beginning which evoke this lonely, stripped back but distant grief to the way the singer is practically screaming his refrain of "Your work here isn't done" by the end, accompanied by the full blasting of instruments and an omnious chorus at his side, everything about this song is centered around building stakes, building realisations, building tensions and it creates this feeling of the speaker growing closer and closer with each new verse and chorus that adds to his anger.

There's also the absolute treasure trove of lyrics that work so well for specifically this tale. A brief overview of some of my favourites include;

- There's a crow overhead singing "Oh, Death is my friend."

- And though you think your time has come, the wheels of Fate have spun. Death has declared your work here isn't done.

- There's a girl on my heart safe ashore in her lover's arms

There's just such a vivid image to be drawn here - of Apollo's emotions being swallowed by his rage, of his resolve to end everything the more he bears witness to Coronis' brazen affair. There's even a strong female voice in the first two verses which seem to egg the speaker on in his spiral - a perfect opening to include Artemis who wishes for her brother to hunt that which brought him such pain alongside her. An Artemis who reinforces just what Coronis has done, an Artemis who does not want her brother to repress his anger after such grave an insult just because love was once there.

To me, it was perfect. Apollo's killing of Coronis was a crime of passion, an execution he sometimes cannot even bring himself to commit according to who is telling the tale. It's a wretched situation, harrowing, suffocating and cruel but if not by Apollo's hands, Coronis would simply die by another's. She cannot live after what she has done. The gods simply would not allow it.

AND THEN MY BIAS WAS COMPLETELY WRECKED BY LORD HURON.

Now, let it be known, I am a huge Lord Huron fan. Strange Trails is perhaps the most Apollo-coded album I've ever heard and songs like Yawning Grave and The Balancer's Eye capture such a visceral, gorgeous portrait of cosmic grief and anger that they haven't really left my brain since I first listened to them. Still, 'Setting Sun' from their Lonesome Dream album completely flew under my radar. Maybe it's because the commercial version is so much snappier than the Alive from Whispering Pines recording, maybe it's because I just hadn't listened to Lord Huron's discography in a while but my god. My god.

This song has it all; a quiet menace in its music, a strong male singer who sounds only barely restrained, an absolute HOST of lyrics that are so wonderfully perfect for the scenario -- after getting over how wonderful the song itself is, I immediately dethroned Your Work isn't Done because ultimately, 'Setting Sun' has something in abundance that 'Your Work isn't Done' minimised in order to focus on the wrath driving the song forward.

And that's love.

Setting Sun is so powerful because it's not just a revenge ballad - it's a dirge, a breakup song, a lament, a regret manifesto. So many times during the song, the speaker wonders when his lover stopped loving him. He recounts intimate moments and wonders if his lover was thinking of the other man when she was enjoying herself, wonders if anything she'd said was even real. And I love that so, so much.

Ultimately, Apollo adored Coronis. As inevitable as her death was, he regretted every second of it. No matter how angry, no matter how betrayed, no matter how intensely he was shamed, he still loved her. He weeps for her when she dies, he screams and grieves and cries when he's faced with her corpse. In some tales, no matter the cocktail of emotion driving him, he simply cannot bring himself to kill her. He'd rather cry in Artemis' arms and take his anger out on his own servant than hurt her. His own father has to dispatch Ischys since Apollo can't even bring himself to hurt that which Coronis once loved. Of course, in this case, Apollo's going to kill someone but the point is, it's not a decision of pure anger so much as its this complicated, horrible mix of resolve and lost love.

And my god does Setting Sun capture this conflict, passion, grief and love so well. UGH, I'm vibrating just thinking about it -- there are so many points where I hear its lyrics and can vividly picture Apollo, jaw clenched looking Coronis in her eyes and quietly confronting her.

Coronis, returning home at twilight after spending the day with Ischys to Apollo stringing his bow, "Oh? Is he ready to die for you baby? No, but you know I would."

Coronis lying to him about who she's spent her time with and Apollo's soft, near pained, "Does it hurt when you lie to me? If you asked, I would set you free."

I even really love the image of a Coronis who runs away from Apollo upon realising what will soon happen, not to escape his arrows but to warn Ischys who does not know what will happen. Of Apollo getting into his stance, taking aim at them and gathering his strength as the final refrains rings out "I know I'll never reclaim your love and that's as hard as it gets, so I'll be taking a life when the sun sets."

Other favourite lines of mine include;

- Oh, is he ready to die for you baby, now that the deed is done?

- Tell me when did I lose your love? Was it him you were thinking of?

- And I could never betray your love, you had me heart and soul. You might never have known it girl, but I was all yours.

And ultimately, I just like this conflicted portrait of premeditated murder much more than the crime of passion 'Your Work isn't Done' paints. Crimes of passion - especially when Apollo is concerned - are tragic in their own right, but in Coronis' case, I think I prefer it so much more when there's no way for Apollo's action to be misconstrued for anything other than what it is, especially since he goes on to cut Asclepius from his mother's corpse then carry on with building her funeral pyre. I think there's something so much more impacting about Apollo being unable to hide away from Coronis' blood on his hands and him having to raise Asclepius with those selfsame hands.

Love of the mortal does not supercede the responsibility of the divine. If Coronis' sentence no matter what is death, who better to lead her gently to the knife than he who still loves her?

[anintroverteddarling]

TW; SLIGHTLY SUGGESTIVE(???), Im not sure but it feels like I've done smth illegal ASKDJNADSFKJADNFS

I tried to draw smth cute again but ended up looking... uh...

but then I added in

Overall, intrusive thoughts won that night help--

[distant--shadow]

new post over on pillowfort ((if you'd like to support me, here are links to my ko-fi and inrpnt - or feel free to get in touch about a commission!))

[nabi-unveiled]

Ten of My Favorite Ships

I was tagged by @delesaria-blog and @watchthisqqq which...yay! I love tag games. It's like a card in the mail. I'm always down for a reason to make a list.

The Real Rules: Without naming them, post a gif of ten of your favorite ships (any media). Tag as many people as possible to do the same!

The Ships: If it were yesterday or tomorrow, this list would probably look different.

He's a leaf on the wind that always supports his warrior woman.

The manga is extremely problematic. But I love the live action version featuring my Queen of Darkness and her Dazzling Light. (Note: I had to create my own gif for this one which is why it's terrible.)

Words may be optional, but they NEED each other.

I like to collect pretty things too.

Color-coded boys are great. But also - I've never related to a character so much as our man in black. We may be called robots, but we have feelings. We just struggle to understand them.

Their past life sucked, but this one is promising. Plus...desserts.

They find their way back to each other eventually. I don't accept other possibilities. I have a lot of head canon for this one.

They're a matching set. What one has in excess, the other desperately needs.

No words needed.

Weirdos the both of them. But they're my weirdos.

Just in case you wanted more information on how I made the decisions or wondered why the couples I obviously hyperfixated on were not on the list....

My Rules: I stuck to shows. I had to think of them without looking anything up. I had to love BOTH characters. I had to want them together and think that being together was the BEST possible outcome for them. It had to be more about the ship itself than the ocean. In other words, it had to be about the couple rather than the show. Additionally, I disqualified anything that was on the list of my two taggers found here and here even though I LOVE a lot of those ships, and that stupid rule made this much harder. But how could I know they weren't primarily in my brain from seeing those lists? I questioned that logic later, but I was already committed.

Note: Not naming/tagging the show is KILLING me. I want to know what these shows are that I see other people posting if I don't immediately recognize them. Give me the recs! 😂

Tagging: @dramalove247 @dribs-and-drabbles @iguessitsjustme Have you done this one yet? No pressure obviously. Also anyone who sees it and wants to play, consider yourself tagged 💖.

[tategamiis]

hiiai week day 1: cuddling <3

[deconstructthesoup]

I'm halfway convinced that Brennan and the other Intrepid Heroes have some sort of window into my mind, because in the very first episode of the new season we get two floating islands---one made of artificial material, one populated by pirates---and an underground 1920's-themed city

And in the D&D-adjacent world I've been creating, the orcs are pirates who live on an archipelago of floating, mostly artificial islands, and my version of the Underdark is themed around the Jazz Age

[danwhobrowses]

I'm not sure how much good this vent will do, I'm not even sure I want to post this vent after my last one, but I'm writing it just so it's out of my head and into words because it seems once again fandom has chosen to send vitriol Ashton Greymoore's way.

What for? They talked to a 'specter' of the primordial titan within them, through their connection to the earth, the natural flow of creation and destruction. They ask what will happen to the world, it responds that it'll endure, they ask what of the people, it responds that the strong will survive and the weak will be remade into something stronger, to which Ashton replies they think they understand. To fandom this means that Ashton is becoming a fascist, that they have a 'Make Exandria Great Again' attitude for wanting the Primordials back, that they need to be beaten up or 'get what's coming to them' in order to change their mind, and I can only sit here and stew and wonder if this hate is really well-founded? Ashton is among my favourite characters in C3, I get frustrated by them at times too but if I think about it a big percentage of my frustrations is more towards people disliking them than me disliking things they do, or Matt setting up scenarios that doesn't do them any favours towards the fandom that hates them. Some of these are knee-jerk reactions of course, but for others it does feel like they have it out for Ashton, and I don't wanna engage with that, which makes it quite lonely when most of the fandom hones in on it.

For the most part I can understand how the whole 'the weak will be remade' bit can be taken badly; it's definitely iffy, but every other plan we have is also very iffy. The Release Predathos option literally involves unleashing an entity that wants to genocide the gods, the Maintain Status Quo option ('option' the status quo imo is impossible, in my mind the Gods can stay but the dynamic will still have to change) maintains a relationship where the gods pick and choose who they feel deserves help, using their power to covet more power, strongarm and demand loyalty, and overall choose fellow gods over mortals when the chips are down and not owning up to it. We should also remember that entities can speak in riddles, 'remade into something stronger' doesn't necessarily mean death; it could mean to adapt and grow, to become strong enough to bear and overcome it as many of the PCs of Critical Role have done with their hardships and trauma. It's worth reminding that the sad truth is that people will die whatever outcome happens - the aim is always to lessen the amount but if the Gods leave it's a power vacuum, if we linger too long it's a Calamity, and if the Gods stay it's a holy war on a more wild and less organized scale - and that Ashton isn't saying they approve of such death, merely that they think they understand. The commune doesn't tell Ashton which way to go; it only tells them that the world will endure, there will be change and it will change people, trees will still grow, the wind will still blow, the waves will still flow along the coasts of the sea, and people will survive. I know the interpretation can differ from people thanks to Matt's patented vague or riddle-mounted choices in phrase, but I also think if it was the Wildmother who told Orym or some other follower that 'nature is a cycle, everything must adapt to change or else it'll die - this world will change, but it will also survive' nobody would be calling Orym a fascist, people would accept it because the Wildmother's domain is nature, and nature is not always kind.

While we're mentioning Orym - and because this is gonna come off as critical I must preface that I like and enjoy All of the Hells, that's not changed - I also gotta call it out here because it does very much feel like the people who hate Ashton hate them for the reasons they love Orym. Both are stubborn, they're diligent in their personal code, they care deeply for their friends and would give their whole being just to keep them safe, they believe in the Hells' power and greatness more than each member does and more than they believe in their own, but Ashton gets the hate mainly because these fans agree more with Orym on the god stuff. What confuses me though is how these same haters can despise Ashton for being consistent but love Braius, the literal Devil Worshipper who secretly is on board with the Chase Away plan only so he can help the Devil rule the world, the compulsive liar. Where's Braius' scrutiny? A world under Asmodeus will be a far worse 'survival of the fittest' scenario, why does Braius get a pass in all this stuff huh? Because he's funny? Seems people ignore the whole morality talk when they're discussing Braius' dedication to Exandrian Satan.

I find it irksome too that even the group seem to criticize Ashton reaching out to Primordials too - as if that wasn't what we wanted them and Fearne to do anyway. They don't dislike the gods simply because they're a 'great entity', it's because they're a great entity that holds power and doesn't use it equally or fairly; they pick and choose who to help, a lot of the time in Ashton's experience for their own self-service, but they won't prioritize mortals over another god no matter who cruel or heinous the god is being, and the following of these gods are so intertwined with politics that most religious motivation also ends up being political. Ashton has no connection to the gods, they reached out and got nothing, an Angel looked at them and made them feel like nothing, but they do have a connection to the Primordials; from the Earth Golem to the Titan Empress they're literally a vessel of, they experienced something significant in their connection to the Earth, so I don't like how that they're almost mocked for having it. In addition, Ashton's behaviour during this commune differs because of that connection, but also because the titans are a natural flow; they don't demand or test or politic or prejudice, and despite being a Great Entity in its own right it never made sure Ashton felt small for their own satisfaction, they asked a question and got an answer, it's the same reason Ashton has disdain for most political leaders but likes and respects Keyleth, Allura, Kima, Pike, and (eventually) Percy despite also being people in power. To call on Orym and the Wildmother as an example again; Orym's an Air Ashari, the Ashari are guardians of the Elemental Planes - made from the Primordials - not tied to a god, but nobody criticizes his connection to the Wildmother despite both not being a follower and his culture being more tethered to Primordials and their descendants. I'm not saying it's all correct for Ashton to want things to go back to how Primordials ruled, but we must remind ourselves also that we only know a story written by victors when it comes to the Schism - a story which could very easily have been altered and edited to make it feel more justified for the Primes and mortals to actively genocide all the Primordials, the native species and creators of this world, and desecrate their remains to make weapons, soul anchors, and cities - the specter didn't say 'fuck em, all mortals should die' after all, if they believe mortals would survive then they must be at the least tolerant of mortal existence. Why is it okay for god followers to say they wanna keep the world with the gods they have a connection to (and I'm not saying they aren't) but Ashton is out of line for wanting to have a world which has something active that they also have a connection to? It seems rather unfair to allow one side to have and the other to have not, picking and choosing because our audience's bias has spent more time with the gods, Ashton wanting something they can connect to doesn't feel all wrong either, the Eidolons still exist with faint worship hiding away so they're not smited by the gods, why can't faith exist so they're not in hiding? I sincerely doubt the Punk Rock that is Ashton is asking for the Primordials to fill the Gods' roles the same way the Gods have been running things either, they want to break the throne remember? There needs to be a balance in ideals and practice of course, and in an ideal world there could even be a more fluid and all-inclusive Exandria where gods and Eidolons live harmoniously with mortals without hierarchy and class systems, I think Ashton could happily live with something like that, they did say the world needs 'a little chaos' to call back to Matt hinting that the current world doesn't have enough.

Which leads us to those wishing violence upon Ashton - and I really don't like that. People who say 'hitting them over the head is the only language they understand' seem to misinterpret Ashton as if everyone around them have been on their hands and knees begging Ashton to reconsider and them ignoring valid points and pulling a Leroy Jenkins. In reality, nobody is actually talking to Ashton about it, a lot of the frustration with Bells Hells right now is that they aren't talking to each other, even about the end goal! Ashton has valid reasons for their thinking, so being violent isn't gonna change their mind; undermining, dehumanizing and trying to effectively bully anyone let alone someone with chronic pain and low self worth will never truly convince them to your way of thinking. All people understand the language of violence, but that language is not used justly, those who truly wish violence upon Ashton don't want it in hopes it'll force Ashton to change their mind, they want it for their own satisfaction of seeing them in pain; so they can further push them away from the rest of the group and go 'that guy's not one of us', make it so the people Ashton calls family after a lifetime of loneliness, confusion and abandonment - the people they promised they won't abandon, and have kept true on that promise even at their lowest - make them feel small and worthless, and force them into box where they can't be themselves, and I hate that people would want to treat them that way. Ashton IS capable of listening; they've stepped back and trusted the other Hells to do their own thing even when it's ridiculous like staging a play where they pretend to be Ludinus to trick Unseelie emissaries into thinking that he attacked them, they listened to the gods even when they didn't have to like they promised they would and despite it being very personal they held themselves back for the benefit of the group, and if the group talked to them calmly where they were all allowed to healthily discuss the pros and cons, the ideals and compromises, and the risk and reward of all plans that have been proposed then they would listen, and they would try - you don't need to slice bread with a broadsword.

Will Ashton 'get what's coming to them'? Maybe, but what is that exactly? We only assume to know the full vision of what Ashton wants to act on. All of Bells Hells are gonna face the consequences of the choice they make on Ruidus - when they finally make one that is - in and out of the world they live in, so won't that apply to everyone? So what for Ashton? do people want Fractures 2.0? Does everything Ashton wants in life have to blow up violently in their face? Family, Closure, their best friend's safety, why does 'what's coming to them' have to be something aggressive and harmful? People change through positive reinforcement and good experiences too! Caduceus Clay would remind you that it's love that makes people. Don't mistake this rant as me wanting Ashton to be exactly as they are now, I too want to see growth from Ashton and we ARE seeing it happen; I see it in small instances where they think twice about rash actions and try not to fly off the handle, when they sit just to listen or understand or to defuse tension, and that when they're going somewhere or doing something they let the group know in advance, those who think Ashton hasn't changed since ep. 1 aren't paying close attention, but that doesn't mean that they don't still have more ground to cover. I believe that Ashton grows the most through kindness; when they're treated like a person and not a blunt instrument or a nuisance, and I hope what's 'coming' for Ashton isn't rejection, bitterness, and isolation, but acceptance, empathy, and for someone - if you know me you'd know who I'd want it to be - to convince them that they are worthy of living, that they're special not because of their powers or blood or because they have died and been put back together again (honestly, it does irk me a little that both Keyleth and Imogen chose that for titles and to brag to the Matron, I know it isn't intended this way but sometimes it feels like saying 'your best defining quality is that you've died a lot') but because while they have every reason to hate everything they still chose to be kind to those who deserve kindness, they have a good heart and they mean well. Are they perfect? No! They're in their 20s very few people irl have their lives together at even twice that age, but I want them to have good things in their life; things that help them feel happy and safe and like they can still feel comfortable in their own skin without having to appear more 'palatable' for people who've already decided that they don't like them. I want them to know that they've always deserved to live and they still deserve it now, I want that not just for Ashton but for all the Hells, and hopefully they'll all live to have it.

And most of all I want the people who hate them to be wrong about Ashton Greymoore, and I want Taliesin to prove them wrong.

[inacatastrophicmind]

Somebody asked me to make a tattoo design with the words Rejoice in the Lord and I'm here like thinking , sweetie, my favorite shows are Supernatural and Helluva Boss, are you sure I'm the right person for this?

[randomwriteronline]

"Ah! You're one of those," a voice came to his ears.

Nuparu turned to find a tall Gaquri standing at the entrance, looking at him curiously.

"I am a Toa," he corrected.

The other nodded: "Yes, I do know that. Forgot the name is all. You're a, uh... Ko?"

"Onu."

"Hm! My mistake. Which element is that, again?"

"Earth. Do you need something?" the inventor cut their small talk short, lightly tapping a tool similar to a wrench against the skeletal frame of what appeared to be a heavily modded chariot: "I'm working on a project."

"You know where Berix is?" the Gaquri asked. He raised an arm: an interesting weapon, with a jagged light blue blade at one end and some kind of projectile mechanism attached to the handle, dangled from it casually. "Wanted to drop this off to him. The thornax launcher's been jamming up more often and I know that boy can make it work like a charm again."

"He's getting parts," Nuparu answered. His eyes rested once more on the blade and he added, tilting his head intrigued: "You can leave it here if you want."

"So you can study some original Bara Magna manufacturing?" the other joked.

"It's not really my field, but it looks remarkable."

He watched the organic being laugh heartily as he approached - with a fairly heavy limp, he noticed: "Remarkable! Now that's a bit of an exaggeration, kid. I made these from some bones, whatever viable scraps I could find from wrecks of the Core War, and a few patches across the years when I could afford it. It's held together by spit and whatever Ackar's friend did to make it spurt water."

"From what I understand, spit doesn't seem like a good adhesive."

"That's what we say here to mean something's parts are real shoddily connected together."

"Hm! Like dried mud. Or aluminum sheet."

"That's the idea. Ah, where should I put this, anyhow?"

"There is fine. What's with your leg?"

The Gaquri gave a grimace: "Nothing much - just my knee acting up," he replied, patting the guilty joint. "Something must have gotten rusted. It happens."

Even through the lack of expression of his mask Nuparu treated him to a baffled look.

"What?"

"Organic parts don't rust," the Toa sputtered. "At least, ours don't."

The other eyed the tendons and muscles peeking through black armor, and his lips perked up in a little smile.

Without a word he placed his weapon on the least cluttered corner of Berix's work desk before redirecting his now free hands to the side of the faulty knee, messing with what appeared to be the graceless stitching of a large wound: his fingers sank deftly into it and pried through the gaps enough to loosen the whole thing, and before the less organic being's flabbergasted eyes pulled down the fake skin and meat to reveal a fully mechanical joint, complete with pistons and springs and even what seemed like wires.

"Don't worry," he chuckled with a wave, "Ours don't either. But most crusty old Glatorian like me haven't been completely flesh and bone in a long time."

If the inventor's attention had been piqued before, he was completely captivated now. He was leaning on his seat towards him, vehicle project all but forgotten, intently studying as many details of the prosthesis as he could see from that distance.

His eager interest made the other laugh again: "Why all that surprise! Don't you see something like this on you every day?"

"Yes, but I'm not you!"

"And what's that mean?"

"You're all flesh! And meat! And skin! How does that work?"

The Gaquri considered something for a moment. "If you can get me a seat and figure out what's wrong with it, I'll be glad to let you have a closer look," he offered at last.

Nuparu pulled the stool from right under himself so fast that he fell on his ass.

He then placed it down with extreme care and patted it insistently.

The other barely held back a snort.

His implant hadn't caused this much of a scene since the first day it had been up and functional.

"The name's Tarix, anyhow," he introduced himself as he sat down a little heavily. "Since you'll be rummaging knuckle-deep through the insides of my leg for the next thirty minutes."

"Hm," Nuparu replied as he kneeled until his mask was all but grazing the joint.

Tarix waited a dozen seconds, and added: "You got one too, Toa?"

"One what?"

"Name."

"Nuparu."

"I see. Ah - nope, nope, don't-" his fingers quickly pinched the mechanical being's and lifted them away from the scarified tissue binding the meat to the metal: "That's real flesh, don't peel that - the nerves still work, you'd put me through the pains of Plude."

"What's that?"

"You folks have a place in your lore built just to torture you forever?"

"Yes, Karzhani. I've been there."

"Huh. Well, I've been to Plude too back when it still existed, and I'll just say that the only good thing the Lord of Sand might've done was collapsing it on itself. So, you get what I mean about the pain."

"Hm. Yes, I can imagine. But how do I - see, to check the individual parts, I'd need to pull them off..."

"Oh - hold it, let me just..."

Angling his leg in an uncomfortable position and hunching down with a hiss, the Glatorian set to work carefully pulling screws loose with the help of an empty pipe he'd fetched from his pocket. The small parts dangled from their sockets without falling, just distant enough from the point the metal touched to allow the top and bottom pieces to be pulled apart without needing to pull the much more easy to lose components out of the whole.

"Hold the calf a moment, will you?" he muttered with the pipe now stuck between his teeth. Nuparu complied, holding the lower half of the leg still as Tarix worked his magic on the inner wires. At last, satisfied, he unfurled his back up once more and puffed satisfied: "There, pull."

When the Toa did so, the prosthesis came apart as easily as a house of cards. Suddenly, in the mechanical palm was a whole calf, still warm with life and undoubtedly organic.

Tarix watched genuinely amused as Nuparu tested the ankle in his hands and on the ground, miming an attempt at a walk as though playing with a very concerning doll with nothing short of pure unadultered fascination.

He posed it as if stuck in a sprint: "Can you feel this?"

"Not a single thing," the Glatorian replied. He patted the metallic femur's exposed head: "And neither can I here. The connections are all in the wires, they go right into the nerves, see? So long as they're apart I can't feel crap anywhere from over here," and he pointed to the flesh that stopped around the middle of his thigh "To the rest of the leg underneath. Not that I should be able to, frankly, if we wanted to abide by nature's whims, but luckily for me us Spherus Magna natives never cared much for that."

Nuparu hummed: "How'd you get it like this, anyways?"

"Oh," the Glatorian shrugged as though it were the most normal thing in the world, "Blew up."

"It just exploded?"

"Not by itself, of course, someone shot the whole thing out of me."

The Toa treated him to an appalled look.

Tarix waved a hand harshly, chewing on his unlit pipe: "The Core War was absolutely barbaric, kid! I've witnessed stuff I wouldn't wish on a Skrall. When I saw that half you've got there in your hand fly over my head as gracefully as the ugliest bird known to any being with eyes, I thought I was going to die of shock like a Mountain Striker with a broken wing. I still have no clue how I managed to keep awake through the bloodloss and pain long enough for the fixers to figure out I was still alive enough to be taken down to the medic."

Nuparu regarded the half of a limb in his grasp with newfound horror and fascination. A whole portion of leg, shot right out... He wasn't sure if even the Vortixx could have had something capable of doing that. Oh, sure, they had plenty of possibly worse things, but even the most blunt tended to have slightly more complex effects than just 'blows a chunk off of you'.

And the fact that they had managed to rebuild the broken joint and connected it to the rest of the nervous system was nothing short of miraculous, compared to the same thing done on a mechanical being - whose organic components regenerate, too.

"And all Glatorian have something like this?"

"Us older ones, yes," the other nodded. He watched with a sort of lazy interest as the Toa turned his attention to the mechanism of his prosthesis, checking for damage as he had promised. "The rookies tend to have the usual stuff, thank goodness - scars, plaques, maybe a limb, some fingers..."

"Fingers?"

"Yes, some of them. They tend to nip 'em a lot during training, you know, when they start to get the hang of it and stop holding their weapons like they're gonna grow a mouth and bite them - they cut tendons often those first few times. Or just the whole thing."

"Really?"

He chuckled, playfully waving his fingers: "Gresh keeps losing them. If you look closely you can tell which phalanxes are still his."

"I thought he was good at fighting."

"He is. He's just young. And a little too brash at times."

Nuparu hummed, moving onto the piece of implant attached to his thigh: "You mentioned limbs, too," he noted absentmindedly: "Is that also common, during training?"

"Losing them? Oh no, that happens out in the desert. Or, used to happen... Well, the desert's still out there, just smaller, so I guess - point is, you'll sooner get one cut off by a Bone Hunter or chewed up by a Vorox than find a fellow Glatorian who'll do that to you, on purpose or not. We made sure to try and avoid that sort of thing when we made the rules for the job."

"And plaques?"

"Oh, these," and he tapped some strange metallic protrusions on the top of his legs, on the side of his arms, and on his shoulders. "Nothing special, they keep armor in place. Easier than having to strap it on. We install them when we come of age."

Their shape was somewhat familiar: "Berix has them too, I think."

"I think everybody gets them - Agori, Glatorian, Skrall..."

"They are pretty useful," the Toa nodded.

He couldn't really imagine how they could have managed to stick armor to themselves otherwise. Maybe through some cloth? But then it might chafe their joints, and they'd have to find a way to insert it in the metal anyways...

He hummed thoughtfully, wracking his brain as he tried at once to figure out both the logistics of putting armor on fully organic beings and whatever was wrong with the implant.

So concentrated he was that he actually jumped a little when the pipe gently smacked his shoulder.

Tarix had a strange look on his face as he pointed down at a spot on his prosthesis: "Don't - it's nothing to be worried about yet, just, watch it," he warned, "That coil there you've got near your index, she's real frisky. Won't be a problem now that it's taken apart, but when you stick it back together you'd better avoid even just so much as grazing it - it'll pull my calf back at top speeds to kick my ass. Been like that since the start."

"Oh! Sounds painful."

"It is!"

With a hand already rummaging through a box of springs, Nuparu offered: "Since I'm here already, I could replace that..."

"Ah, there's no need really," the Glatorian quickly stopped him.

"But it's a liability."

"If it's out in the open like this, yeah, but - well, when it's covered it's a lot more manageable, and the wires-"

"It's still a malfunction. I can fix that without any trouble."

"I get it, but it's - I - hm! Let me explain. See, when - if I cover it up, see, with my-"

"The fake flesh?"

"Yes, that - it still jerks back if touched, but not as hard, you get me?"

"But it still does."

"Yes, and here's the - the thing is, I also have my nerves connected, right? Right, and when the coil gets touched and makes my leg jerk, it... Er... See - have you ever - hm! Hmm-hm. Hold on. Do you... Is there something that you know is not good for your body, but when you do it it just feels nice?"

"No."

"Alright, this complicates things."

"Oh! Oh, no, wait - when I cut metal with a saw, I like to keep myself as close to the sparks as possible so they can hit me because they tingle. It's fun. Do you mean like that?"

"Eeeh, close enough! That's what's going on with that coil."

"It tingles?"

"It... Uh... Sure, let's. Call it that."

The change in tone was weird, and he seemed to be somewhat embarrassed about having brought the subject up.

Now, in regards to asking personal questions, Nuparu tended to be as uninterested in other beings' private matter as much as a Kofo-Jaga is in lightstones.

However, this was directly related to the machinations of an impressive, if a little primitive, handmade mechanical joint.

So yes, he would have loved to pry.

The mental manifestation of Turaga Whenua repeatedly smacking him over the head with his drilling staff was currently the only thing keeping him from inquiring on any activities Tarix might have enjoyed dabbling in outside of his work hours, but luckily for the Glatorian that singular imaginary scenario was also an extremely effective deterrent for any Matoran or Toa that had ever at some point of their lives resided in Onu-Koro.

As such, the Toa just shrugged and diverted his attention onto the object the Gaquri was now nervously twisting in his hand: "What's that, by the way?"

The total swerve in subject matter destabilized the Glatorian briefly. He looked down at his fingers, then back at the Toa.

"A pipe?" he replied.

Nuparu squinted at it a little better: "That does not look like a pipe." he decreted.

Tarix lifted an eyebrow, curiously: "It's just an Agori pipe."

"That's not a pipe," the inventor insisted.

"And how should a proper Toa pipe look like, then?"

"Matoran pipe, maybe-" the Toa scoffed, rolling his eyes and making the other chuckle a bit while the mechanical hands went right back to checking on his implant in the midst of his correction: "First of all, it's far too small to be of any proper use; second, that seems to be made of wood, which is the worst material for this kind of thing - even if you could fit that tiny piece in a proper hydraulic system, long time usage will lend it to rot and come apart much faster, which is why we used to trade iron with Le-Koro to avoid the whole village from caving in on--"

"Oh!" Tarix interrupted him all of a sudden, smacking the object on his palm with a hollow sound: "Oh, you meant - no no no, it's not that type of pipe! It's a, uh -- pipa! Nagele! Sghitt!"

"Don't curse at me, please."

"I'm not cursing at you, it's just different names for this! You really don't have a word for-?" then he cut himself off as he seemed to remind himself of something evidently obvious: "Ah - well, I mean, you don't have a mouth, of course you can't smoke..."

"Yes we do."

"You do?"

"Yes? How else would we hold our masks?"

Tarix blinked, briefly wondered if he should have asked, and decided it didn't matter: "But you don't smoke? At all?"

"No? Unless we get catastrophically overheated or are set on fire," Nuparu replied as he attached the disjointed calf into the thigh again. "Both of which in all fairness have happened before. Not very often, but they have happened."

"No, I meant... Ah, hold it, hold it..."

He stuck the unlit pipe back in his mouth, puffing out nothing a few times with a thoughtful expression on his face.

"See - it's a bit like the coil and the sparks again, the matter with smoking," he decided to start explaining: "There's certain plants, if you dry them and burn them well, that make really pleasant smoke."

"How is smoke pleasant?" the Toa muttered.

"The smell can be," the Gaquri shrugged, "And the taste too. Wait-" and he gently knocked the foot of the pipe on the top of the Volitak before the inventor could interrupt him again "-Wait a second, I can't very well clear this up if you keep cutting in. Alright, so the bigger part here, the bowl we call it - you need to press the dried plants in here and light them up, only a little before the whole thing burns up; once they're charred nicely, you inhale through the shank, and then you puff it back out. That's how the smoke gets in your mouth and you can taste it."

"And how does it taste, then?"

"Ah, depends on what you smoke," was the whistful answer. "Same goes for the smell. The Lebori have a certain bark that gets real flexible when wet - they make whole pipes with it, they burn up real well, but it's a bit too sour for me. Before the Shattering there used to be a type of kelp I liked, and Kiina said they had River Eyes up near the Dormus that made some terribly sweet smoke."

"River Eyes?"

"It's a flower! Small, round, blue, and it grows on river banks. Never got to try them, though, and it's better I don't go around asking for some with the lungs I've got. Like I said, smoking's the same as the coil and the sparks: feels good to do, but it's bad for the body."

Nuparu hummed deeply, rummaging inside the knee as he handled the hanging wires carefully.

"I think I figured out the problem," he announced.

At that Tarix perked up: "Rust?"

"One piston has developed a limestone growth that makes it much harder to move properly, and as a result one of the springs is bent out of shape and chafes right against the nerve."

"Ah! Well, damn. You can get limestone in there?"

"If it's humid enough, it can build up over time."

"Hm... Alright, I guess all those years sweating in arenas and whatnot were bound to do the trick eventually."

"Also there was rust."

"Hm. Where?"

"Three screws. I changed them already."

"Wait, really? When?"

"While you were talking about the Core War."

"Huh! You're quick. And quiet."

The Toa shrugged: "I like working."

He pulled the prosthesis apart for a second time, laying the calf down on the floor. He then leaned back to search through a tool box brimming with bits and pieces - bolts, nuts, coils, springs, and all sorts of other things - with what his mask's stillness still managed to convey as a focused furrowed brow, evidently still thinking about what course of action to take now that he had pinpointed the anomaly to fix.

Changing his mind, he stood up and made his way to one of the various piles of junk and assorted more or less useful knicknacks to start looking for something in there instead.

"Speaking of the Core War," he said, implying he wanted to start a conversation but without really adding to that sentence.

Tarix waited a few minutes, puffing out in silence while watching him shift towels or bottles until he found what he was looking for (a clean enough rag and flask containing a murky liquid), before figuring that he was waiting for some kind of permission to continue on the admittedly not particularly pleasant topic: "Yes?"

"You said other older Glatorians also got implants like this from it."

"I implied it, but yes, that's the case."

The Toa hummed as he settled back before him: "And they're all knees, like yours?"

"You want to ask what their own prosthesis are?"

At that, he got no response.

"You can, by the way," Tarix reassured him, "It's been a damn long time by now, it doesn't hurt as much as say, eighty hundred years ago. We've been living like this long enough to joke about the whole thing and whatnot."

Nuparu mumbled something indistict as he soaked up the rag and began scraping the limestone off of the metal with it.

"Don't act all shy now, kid! As I said, it's no trouble." the Glatorian repeated. A sly smile curled the corners of his lip: "You can't get embarrassed like this every time you have to ask about new possible clients, you know," he jokingly reprimanded him, "Otherwise you'll have a hard time getting any."

"I don't want to be paid!" the Toa replied. "I'm just curious, is all! This is... Well, I didn't expect it to be something you'd have."

"Oh, don't worry, not everybody's missing a whole chunk of leg like me," Tarix chuckled. "We Glatorian like to keep ourselves distinct from one another."

"In implant too?"

"Of course! Let me think, now..."

He inhaled a long breath through his pipe, leaning back a little as the kid continued on with his work, and exhaled with a whistle.

"So, let's see - Vastus, he's got a good chunk of his lower spine replaced and, oh, 'bout three quarters of his intestines," he began: "Kiina had her hip crushed and put back together, and that should be... Ah, nope, nope, half of her left hand and the whole ulna too. Telluris I haven't see in a long while now, but unless he's figured out how to place his brain in a tin can I'd bet his head's all that's left. Certavus, bless his memory, I don't think he had a single original organ left by the end, and Gelu's got bionic feet - one foot, one leg, right, a whole leg, so then Strakk was the one who got his eye shot out and his nose crushed. And the jaw, of course. I don't remember if it was him or Malum who cracked his head but I do think it was him, because Malum had the femur that got split in half and it worsened with that problem with his ribcage where the metal was corroding and messing with his blood... Which is why he had to get his marrow replaced in his leg later on. Oh, and Ackar also had to... Ah, wait, which one was it? Right, right. Ackar, poor guy, his back itself is worse than a Plude street but his real problem's his right shoulder blade, which got essentially pulverized - I was there, ghastly sight - so they had to replace the whole thing, and that was bad enough; but then, and this is the fucked thing, the implant actively degraded the rest of the arm, so he had to keep replacing bits and pieces of it until it was just completely gone."

Nuparu lifted his head, eyes wide and flabbergasted: "The fixing made it worse?"

"It did! He kept having trouble moving it."

"How?"

Tarix raised his shoulders: "Beats me," he replied just as baffled. "It's a common thing for Tapyri, honestly. It's hard to tell if the material's bad quality or has trouble with the heat. Perditus too - after he got half his leg replaced, the damn thing somehow managed to melt halfways and left him limping almost worse than he would if he just didn't have it."

"And he can't replace it?"

"It's grafted onto the bone and the muscle has grown over it. They'd have to carve the whole thing out with it, it's just not worth it."

The Toa stared at him positively appalled.

"That is horrid," he spat, punctuating the adjective with a harsh yank of his hand over the faulty piston, thus launching a loosened piece of limestone to skid across the floor.

"You're tellin' me, kid."

"That's - it's inadmissible. It's insane."

"And I haven't told you about the Agori."

"What about the Agori? Were they fighting too? Do they-?"

"No, not fighting, usually - it's something we got in common with your lot: we're basically the same species, but we are much bigger and they're much nimbler. So you had us larger folk tearing one another to bits properly, while they tended to work as scouts if they weren't busy trying to put us back in one piece."

The Gaquri interrupted himself to stretch his arms up, pulling one towards his head.

The movement produced a loud 'crock!' roughly around the height of his shoulder, followed by much softer pops crackling all the way up towards his wrist as it twisted.

Satisfied with the sound (which instead made the inventor a little uneasy considering their conversation), he moved to massage the sides of his spine with his knuckles, rolling his neck: it seemed to make a curious ticking noise in place of a meatier sound, filling in the quick pauses of Nuparu's rag scrubbing the limestone away.

At last he puffed into his unlit pipe: "If you look at the older ones - the Agori, I mean - you'll see they've got less lower half than upper."

"That makes no sense."

"It does if you don't count implants. We've got them a bit everywhere, I told you, but an Agori with an arm prosthesis is a real rarity. They've got them mostly between their soles and the top of their hipbones."

"And why's that?"

"It's 'cause the lucky ones stepped on mines."

The Toa hummed thoughtfully.

He did not raise his eyes from the almost clean piston: "And the unlucky ones?"

"Well, we were trained to aim for either the neck or the head."

Ah.

Those certainly had been unlucky.

For every thing Toa and Glatorians seemed to have in common, a complete opposite came around. To imagine a Toa willingly kill was already hard, though not impossible - the Mahri themselves had been met with the chance to do so once or twice, and it had been tantalizing to say the least; but to envision a group of his brothers and sisters being not only instructed but even trained to kill, and especially to kill Matoran...

Well, he was glad he did not live in that kind of world.

"That's just how life is," Tarix sighed in the end. "Nobody wins. They've got their metal hips, and I've got my leg held together by wires and pistons. And an artificial diaphragm."

That snapped Nuparu out of his unpleasant musings: "A what?"

"That one wasn't the war's fault, though - well, it was, but it came in later. See, I had some sharpnel that got stuck in there but nobody noticed, and then one day I got a shove in the wrong spot during a match and just stopped breathing. So I had to get a mechanical one, and when I have to put myself under any sort of strain I need to hook myself up to an oxygen supplier to make sure it doesn't collapse under the effort - you know, that tube thing you might have seen on me, sort of like yours."

"Your gills?"

"I..." the Gaquri briefly did a double take. "You call those gills?"

"Yes?"

They blinked at each other briefly.

"Yeah," Tarix conceded, "Yeah, I guess those would be gills for you folks, huh. Makes sense."

"What was it that you had to replace?"

"My diaphragm."

"What is that?"

"... The muscle?"

"Which muscle?"

"The... The one that makes the... Lungs? Work? I understood you did have lungs?"

"Lungs work on their own."

"No they do not?"

"Yes they do. They are muscles."

"No they are not??"

Before Nuparu could further argue his point by lifting his chest plate and forcing Tarix to behold the disquieting spectacle offered by his very much clearly autonomously moving lungs, the unmistakeable noise of a small variety of hollow brass objects gracelessly crashing on the floor and being hurriedly chased after by stomping feet attracted their attention elsewhere.

Berix did not notice them as immediately as they noticed him, since he was busy making his entrance on all fours as he scrambled to pick up a bunch of scrap metal that had spilled from his arms.

The other two beings made no sound as they watched him curse to himself after stepping on a rogue bolt. They decided to simply observe him in silence much like an equipe of entomologists observes a particularly frenetic spider panicking for some kind of fault in its web, making no motion to lend the young Agori any help as he crawled along the ground to collect the scattered pieces of his scavenged treasure of junk.

It was particularly fascinating when he accidentally shoved several bolts in his mouth to the point of almost stuffing his cheeks with them, realized his mistake, and spat them in what looked like an exhaust pipe.

He almost cried when they fell out of it and rolled away again.

Then he lifted his eyes briefly to the other two silent beings in the room and failed to recognize them.

Meaning he then proceded to jump almost three whole bio straight in the air once he figured there were people looking at him - landing on a screw.

"FUCK!" he whimpered.

Tarix waved: "Hello to you."

"Do you need help?" Nuparu asked with a notable delay.

The Agori kneeled to the ground and skidded across it: "No no no, I'm good! I'm good, I'm - hey, hi, Tarix, hi, when did-? What are you-? Uh," he said nervously as he tried to catch as many nuts and springs as possible, "What is going on there? Is it, did I interrupt or, should- should I leave? Again? Should I leave again?"

"Nuparu's fixing my leg."

At that Berix snapped his head with a deafening gasp to look directly at him, the most betrayed expression to ever grace his face plaster across it.

"But I wanted to do that!" he cried out in anguish like a desert fox cub experiencing the horrors of its mother's tongue bath for the first time: "I told you I could do it, I- I replaced Gresh's ribs and, and I fixed his lungs when the Skrall got him and he hasn't had problems with them since, I told you I could do it, I'm good at fixing-!"

"I know that, and Gresh told me you did real well," the older Gaquri stopped him, "But - don't take it personally, kid, you're good and all, but when it comes to my leg I only trust you as far as I can throw you and believe me, it ain't far."

"But then why does he get to do it!" Berix wailed, pointing at Nuparu still scrubbing off the limestone.

"He's got a whole body like this, I'd imagine he knows what to do."

"But I know what to do too!"

"I told you, I'd rather have a specialist on it."

The Toa briefly wondered if being a descendant of the Water Tribe had something to do with how outstandingly wet Berix could will his eyes to look, or if it was just a specifically Berix thing.

Mabe it was an Agori defense mechanism. After all, it would have been pretty hard to want to hurt something that appeared to be the personification of the verbs 'to whimper', 'to whine', 'to sob', and last but not least 'to wail'.

Whatever the origin of such an expression of anguish, Tarix was not immune to its effects: "Oh, don't be like that," he finally pleaded with a tired but guilty tone, and pointed off to the cluttered desk not too far away: "There, I've got something for you too, alright? I came in 'cause my Thornax launcher's busted and you're the best with 'em. Could you fix that for me? Pretty please?"

That was enough to light the younger being's face up again.

With the sort of excited thin howling laugh that a mischievous ghost might have, he scuttled away to the mess of a table that was the headquarters for most of his projects: onto it he dumped the rest of his scraps, not caring even in the slightest that it only helped to worsen the general situation he already had going on as he was already completely absorbed by the thought of the inner mechanics of the weapon at hand.

The perfectly good chair right beside him thoroughly ignored in favor of sitting on the ground in a curled position that would have made a shrimp suggest booking an osteopathic appointment, he immediately started tinkering around to figure what the problem was with the drive and precision of a blood hound.

That had been perhaps one of the best things their unplanned collaboration had brought Nuparu - aside from all the knick-knacks and thingamajigs and vehicles and tools he'd been able to make or just plan out with the Agori, of course. Watching Berix work on something was such a fun and fascinating experience: his intensity gave his body language a sort of visceral desperation that contrasted his careful fumbling motions, pulling pieces apart with his scarred skeletal fingers and letting them fall all around him as though discarded carelessly - yet he somehow always knew where to search when he needed them again, and if in the middle of his fixer's frenzy you asked him for a specific nut or a gear he could pick it up without even looking, always on the first try. The thunderous act of creation and its rhythmic symphony played on rough instruments whisked the both of them away from the world at large, but when the Toa managed to pull himself back to reality (whether done or stumped or just in need of a break) it was enjoyable if not just all-together mesmerizing to observe the other hard at work on his own project.

A loud bang was not enough to deter him from the launcher either.

The equally loud voice that followed with an exasperated bark did, however: "BERIX! THE DOOR!"

"RIGHT! RIGHT- RIGHT, HOLD ON!" he squeaked hurriedly, abandoning (with a little more care) the weapon to scuttle away as fast as he could to the entrance of their laboratory.

The figure that emerged from the held open door replied to his rambling apologies by grunting every few steps - not without reason, seeing as they were carrying the carcass of an older model of chariot intertwined with some other mean of transport that had clearly gotten lodged sideways in its back, trying to balance the hellish thing on their shoulders in a way not too dissimilar to how a shepherd might carry a too small Mahi tired from a day of running wildly.

The mess of a car accident was dropped rather gracelessly onto the first largest spot of floor available; freed from their herculean weight, the being sighed and pulled back their arms, making the rather dull metal vertebrae poking from their skin creak in a somewhat unsettling fashion.

Nuparu briefly wondered if they were encrusted in limestone too.

They sort of looked like it.

Hm.

Now he had to wonder if it was a common yet not very well-known problem for organic beings with mechanical implants. Maybe it had to do with an excessive production of sweat?

While he was busy pondering that, Tarix grinned at the sight: "Hello, my beautiful wife who sucks at killing me," he crooned lovingly.

Vastus turned to him with a smirk, thin feathers raised and brows slightly furrowed in a manner that was much more fond than annoyed: "Hello, my beautiful husband who can't aim for shit," he replied; upon noticing the Toa kneeled before him, he cheekily added: "Committing adultery, I see?"

His partner wheezed a loud gurgling laugh: "Twelve thousand years we've been married! Twelve thousand years and now you mistake me for Gelu!"

"For who?"

"What, you haven't heard about--?"

"NOT IN FRONT OF MY PROJECTS!" Berix shrieked.

The Lebori chuckled - it was a strange sound, some kind of hiccuping hiss - and reached out to rub his hand all over the younger Gaquri's head; the kid swiveled away from him with a soft rattling noise as his annoyed trembling arms shook his scales against one another, face contorting into a piqued grimace, and returned to the launcher to tinker the other two away from his conscious perception.

"And where'd you get that?" the Glatorian inquired, pointing at it with his chin as it was common to do in his tribe and getting no answer.

"It's mine," his husband reassured him, "He's fixing it."

"Jammed again?"

"Seems like it."

"Bet you just didn't clean it properly."

"You don't know that."

"But I'm right," Vastus teased him as he approached to steal the pipe from his mouth. "And over here, what's going on?"

"He's fixin' up my leg. Nuparu, by the way, that's his name - he's a, ah, Ko- nope, Onu-Toa, he said - thought it was rust but I had limestone in it."

"We can get limestone?"

"Might be the sweating," Nuparu interrupted them suddenly. He fixed his unmoving mask onto the Lebori: "Can you turn around, please?"

Tarix snorted at the other's brief baffled blink: "Hey now, kid, I get you've put your hands in me and all, but you shouldn't go around just checking my wife out like that!"

"NOT! IN FRONT! OF THE PROJECTS!"

The Toa looked between the three of them with no clue what any of them was going on about: "I thought there might have been crusts on the vertebrae," he explained. "Since I have the solvent at hand already, I could handle that already if it's the case..."

"That's what they all say," the Gaquri snickered.

His confusion was palpable.

Vastus flicked a playful finger at his husband's head, warning him: "Berix is gonna kick you out at this rate... But I'm sure it's just some dust, kid, nothing to worry about."

"It still would not hurt to do a simple visual check."

"He's right," Tarix interjected while trying to snatch his pipe back and failing: "Maybe you've been building up a limestone deposit this whole time without knowing it."

"I don't have limestone."

"You don't know that."

Vastus smirked at him as he turned around for Nuparu to check: "But I'm right."

"You can't keep answering that and get away with it."

"I can if I'm always right."

The inventor gave a high pitched hum: "False alarm. That's just dust," he confirmed.

A triumphant grin briefly met the Gaquri's eyes as he rolled them.

Nuparu reached into a box to pull out a short variety of springs in order to compare their size with that of the one that had been bent by the affected piston, now cleaned and hopefully ready to work smoothly; careful not to dislodge anything else, he carefully pried the ill piece out and hooked up its replacement.

Satisfied with how the procedure had done, he pulled himself back a little and announced: "I have another question."

"Shoot," Tarix answered instantly.

"What do 'wife' and 'husband' mean, exactly?"

A hot second of silence passed in which the Glatorian regretted opening his mouth.

He glanced at Vastus.

His wife glanced back.

The quiet persisted.

"We're married," he answered lamely at last.

The question he dreaded slapped him in the face with outstanding punctuality: "And what does that mean?"

Having had his fun of seeing his husband's best full-body impression of a yam turning exponentially smaller when fried to a crisp piece of coal, the Lebori finally intervened: "You folks have contracts?"

"We do."

"Marriage is a contract between people where you become part of one other's family. And tribe, if you're from different ones like us."

A vacuous gaze met his explanation.

"Alright, what's confusing you?"

"The 'becoming part of' thing."

Vastus shrugged, his feathers puffing out for a moment before returning flat in a way similar to how certain avian Rahi did before starting a very long song: "It means we become relatives," he tried again. "Here, look - Tarix is a Gaquri and I'm a Lebori, so my family and hers come from different tribes. By marrying me she became a sort of honorary member of the Jungle tribe, and everybody treats her almost as though she was my brother, or my cousin; in the same manner, I became an honorary member of the Water tribe and I'm treated like her sister or cousin."

"So... It's sort of like assembling a team?" Nuparu tilted his head, puzzled: "There's no need for a contract for that. All Toa consider each other siblings already."

The other clicked his tongue as though he'd bitten it by accident: "I shouldn't have used that metaphor," he muttered.

"Why not?"

"First of all marrying your actual blood-siblings is frowned upon."

"Why? What's a blood-sibling?"

"I'll tell you when you're older. Secondly, I can assure you marriage is nothing like siblinghood."

At that, the Toa frowned: "It sounds the same to me."

"Your knee and Tarix's look the same to me, too," Vastus argued: "They're both made of metal, so they're the same thing."

"They really aren't." then he blinked, bright eyes flashing briefly, looked to the ceiling to recollect his thought, gave a loud hum, and met his gaze again: "I see your point."

The Glatorian smiled: "Good kid."

"Back to the point - how do 'wife' and 'husband' fit with all that?"

"That's just how you call someone who's married."

"So they're synonyms?"

"Yes, pretty much."

The answer seemed to satisfy the inventor greatly.

"I'm learning so much about your species today," he commented in a giddy tone. He returned to the discarded robot calf on the floor, dusting off its mechanical parts to make sure not even small amounts of debris would interefere with its functions; just as he plucked it back into the bulk of the implant, he looked again at the two Glatorian and told them with complete and total earnestness: "You know, if you were significantly smaller, quadrupedal, perhaps vaguely insectoid and incapable of speech, Turaga Whenua would have the best day of his life writing down and trying to decypher your absolutely incomprehensible habits."

That was the highest compliment an Onu-Matoran from the island of Mata Nui could bestow upon someone.

It was not categorizable as such by perhaps any other being in the entire universe, considering the source of such an idiom had been cut off from all other known civilizations and it was generally not considered particularly flattering to be told that you would make for a great petri dish for one's paternal figure to microscope if you were any less sentient, but luckily his tone did manage to properly convey the positive nature of his otherwise insane sentence.

So instead of knocking his head off with roundhouse kick, Tarix and Vastus smiled awkwardly in an attempt at not laughing in his face and just replied: "Thanks."

His Volitak did not have a mouth, but Nuparu's grin was blinding.

Berix chose that moment to shriek triumphantly.

"Fixed!" he declared, Thornax launcher hoisted into the air like it was the second making of the Element Lords.

The older Gaquri turned to him with eyes wide: "What, already?"

"It was encrusted with Thornax juice!"

Not even the time to feel bashful about such a silly and easy to fix thing hindering his battling performance so much that his wife was already leaning down into his line of sight with a smirk so wide that he could have just bitten his whole head off with it.

"What did I say?" he teased.

Tarix sighed, a weary smile on his face: "You cannot keep getting away with this."

"Yes I can," Vastus gloated, "If I'm always right."