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“i am missing something fundamental that makes me human <- passe, aspires to conformity

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i am possessing something fundamental that makes me inhuman <- forward-thinking, open mind to the Possibilities”

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@kinseijoshi.bsky.social Feb 4 2026

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The air is hot and dry and people are staring and we’re being loud and annoying but I don’t care my hands are still wrapped around Aliyah’s waist because she’s here! She’s really here and I don’t know what to say yet (I never will) but then I spot someone in a hoodie powerwalking towards me and by the time I see what’s in the hands he’s thrusting out towards us I start to leap away with her and I’m fast but it’s too late and some of the acid splashes on her as well and she scr-

The air is hot and dry and people are staring and we’re being loud and annoying but I don’t care and yet before I can draw her a little tighter against me I see a shifty looking figure in a hoodie walking intently towards us like he knows something we don’t and it’s not the question she wants to ask but she says, “Hey, what’s with all the rush?” Anyway when I grab her hand and start running back to the police line and for a brief moment I can see the disappoin-(that would never happen).

The air was hot and dry and the report says people were staring at us, and I know I was too immersed into her and the moment to remember or notice anyone else and I know that it worked out as well as it could but she still had to see that, she had to see me writhing around on the ground with my face melting off barely audibly screaming and there must have been a better way right? I could have done better somehow, someway, that pebble near me could have been kicked into him and forced him to stumble or-or just let the guards take care of him instead of killing him myself after she was safe….

A thought comes to mind, ‘He was the first of many, in my last wielder’s time we slew hundreds who sought to claim our power as their own, and as much of a failure as he was he did not hesitate to act, you will need to do the same.’ 

I’m in that moment again, except this time as soon as he pushes his hands out my mind reaches up to Typh-Ea’s and a bolt of lightning from the heavens reduces him and his vial into smoke and ash and fog. There is no hint of cloud or rain above us, people are screaming and scattering in horror and fear, and Aliyah is… 

No that wouldn’t have helped wouldn’t it? She’d be even more… She’s told me that she needs time and space to just, wrap her head around all this, and I don’t blame her but it still sucks right? I mean don’t I get that? I was really hoping to have someone I could talk to about all this that isn’t well…

I feel a dull pang coming from my stomach and I remember that eating is a thing I need to do every now and then, and with nothing left in my bag or fridge I stumble on out of my container to the cafeteria someone at some point said was being opened soon.

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Winking at the harsh natural sunlight, and stepping onto concrete warm enough to bleed through my sandals I can’t help but notice how efficient all of this was. Salome held us back at Milan for a day or so to go through all the check ups and quote unquote ‘contain the situation’, and by the time my face has grown back in fully they had already finished setting the rafted concrete and putting barbed wire topped fencing all over the place. 

And the cafeteria building itself took what? A couple days to turn from a glorified van and tent into the air conditioned prefab I’m walking into? And I know it’s meant to feed all of the armed guards and onsite technicians as well, but they’re only here for me(us) in the first place right? I can’t help but think about how much all of this must cost and feel a little… Intimidated? Flattered? Or well it doesn’t quite sit right with me but I’m pretty sure at least part of that is Typh-Ea speaking. 

It’s all she lets me dream about you know? Gold flowing into my coffers like rivers feeding into a sea, the Duke and his vassals reduced into subservience or devoured into our gaping maw, the remnants of the fleet and R.O.M.E. broken and sent crashing down into each city that refuses to bend the knee to my rule as the screams of hundreds of thousands damned are blared into each and every speaker, visions of bodies burning and lands salted etched into the mind of every serf as Aliyah or Salome or any one of those other women take my pick are squirming in bed while dressed in t-I take in a deep whiff of the sweet and savoury beef broth wafting from the kitchen and it drags me right out and makes my stomach growl in the moment before I bump into the metal bar things you’re supposed to put the tray on while you drag it from station to station and the woman manning this side of the cafeteria just stares at me like I’m some sort of idiot or in need of medical care while smiling like everything’s ok.

I meet her gaze, pick up a tray, and slide it along and… Why hasn’t the Duke done anything yet actually? Is he waiting for us to finish setting all this up? Is he and his men deliberating the best plan of attack o-a thought comes to mind, ‘The Duke may have learnt of our moment of weakness and decided to wait until we could properly subdue our people. It seems like something a weak and vain man such as he would do, of course if I was in his place I would simply tear my opponent limb from limb in front of his people to show them what a true king is like, but we can’t all-’ Huh, that makes sense actually, thank you.

Am I smiling? I’m still smiling aren’t I? I didn’t stop while we wer-My eyes continue to pan to meet her’s as I ask for a few fried nuggetlike things alongside my rice and salad and sweet stir fry something and I completely forget to grab a drink because a certain someone is yelling in my mind about not paying for what we are owed again and I turn around as soon as the plate is full to see where I could sit after we’re done and huh, the professor is here.

Why is she here actually? This place is entirely out of the way of everything else and you’d think they’d keep her back at the quarry where the dig site and the whole mess that is the Omnivaga’s scraps still are… or maybe that’s done already? I uh, God how long should that take anyway I’ve never really… There’s an itching in the back of my head as Typh-Ea considers something, weeks maybe? Even if they had a motivated crew and the whole company backing it (which, even after all this Typh-Ea still thinks ‘that woman’ is lying about how much she really rules it), there really isn’t… Who would even know how to handle something like this you know? I guess it’s like a crashed/beached ship.

Anyway she hasn’t noticed me yet I think, and the place isn’t too full so it’d be weird if I just sat there since we’ve only met a couple of times before and I didn’t really get the impression that she’d you know, think that’d mean anything right? So I make a point of taking a seat somewhere free and far away enough from everyone, and all it does is give me a good view of her picking up her tall glass of latte and walking on over to sit across from me with a, “Hi Holly, how are you holding up?”

“Mhh?” I ask mouth still full of a shrimp nugget brushed in the mayo as I’m chewing on it and rolling everything over my tongue again and again and just, God I still can’t get over just how good it feels to be able to just, taste things again. No comment on that huh?

“Sorry it’s just, do you mind if I ask you a few questions?” Cynthia says, apparently undeterred.

“Mph, yeah? What about?” I say, already moving for another mouthful.

“Uh, we can start with something simple,” Cynthia says, pulling out her phone and setting it to record already. “How are the two of you settling in Holly? Any complaints so far?”

I try to open my mouth and once again someone else’s thoughts flows into my mind. ‘My home is a five by seven brick hut with no windows that looks like a lump of dough tossed into the fire in haste and cast aside with a shower that sputters when it bothers to turn on at all and no one to clean my one room hut with but myself when my previous wielder! Coward as he was he lived like a king, no matter where he went his servants would attend him hand and foot! Hand and foot Holly! And the encampments his people would build, oh once he got enough worlds under his belt they built him something that would make these people really believe he was king, but you? You are an embarrasment, to me and all who bear my name and title. Also it’s too hot outside.’

I cough, struggling to make sense of it all, whittle it down to something a little more, “Not all that great, my hut I mean house? Room? It’s a bit too small to hang around in, but everywhere else’s too hot, and the water’s been weird ever since we got here”

Typh-Ea’s previous wielder had his men divert the course of an entire river, he wanted a pool to bathe in and found a convenient dried up riverbed, she makes me think about this the whole time Cynthia says, “Ah yeah, there’s not much of an aquifier around here and laying pipes down all the way from the city is a bit… it’s a big ask I think, for something temporary.” 

“Yeah but this thing’s going to be around for however long it takes for me to kil-for all of this to be dealt with and go away. We don’t know for sure if the Duke’s only got the three he showed us right? I might be stuck here a while is the thing,” I say, trying to weasel through it while nursing a growing headache caused by the vivid image growing in my mind of the king’s royal river.

“Yeah that’s actually the other thing I wanted to ask you about Holly, you and your uh mecha, what was its name again?” Cynthia said with no hint of malice (or thought) in her mind.

I try to course correct with, “Her, her name is Typh-Ea, she’s made that very clear.”

“Ok, Tifea, Teef-Taiph, Typh-Eiah ok, has uh, Typh-Ea said anything else about how all this works since Milan? Anything that could help us understand why any of this is even happening?” Cynthia said, mangling m-her name every time.

I shake my head, trying to muscle through Typh-Ea’s growing attention and swirling thoughts, “Nothing I haven’t already told Salome about, she let you read the meeting notes right?”

“Yeah but, that’s, that can’t be how it still works right? Even if all of that is true it’s been uh, thousands of years, empires, empires don’t last that long, something that stupid can-just, why didn’t we know? How did we just miss… everyone?” Cynthia says, looking more into her drink than me.

I open my mouth to respond and there are words trying to crawl out about her feeblemindedness, the folly and weakness of our modern age and the world that we live in that I spend a bit to wrap my head around until I can crush it all down to something along the lines of, “Uhhh, Typh-Ea says we’re looking for the wrong thing? There’s not really a word for what everyone else is using, and I can’t really understand it myself but you can’t really like, run an interstellar kingdom on radiowaves so no one bothers really.”

“Well that’s convenient,” Cynthia says dismissively.

I’m really reaching here, slipping through Typh-Ea’s thoughts to fish out something I half remember from college warm with Aliyah, “I mean, yeah, like think about it. It takes us uh how many years to get a message to Earth and back?”

Cynthia opens her mouth to say something, but closes it as soon as I start groaning again, “We only heard about the war when the USC had already surrendered and sent migrant fleets over, you can’t exactly run an interstellar empire when it can take a decade just to say hi between neighboring provinces right?”

Cynthia lets out an odd little sound, “Yeah but I just, why didn’t anyone come for us again though? If there’s this great big empire out there that’s uh, encompassed everyone and everything including Earth then why did they leave? What happened to Typh-Ea that led her all the way out here? And why can’t we remember her?”

All of a sudden the stream of thoughts or words or images or whatever’s Typh-Ea’s actually doing just, stops, she’s surprisingly silent about this, and it makes me wonder if this is something she doesn’t want to think about? “I don’t, I don’t know.”

“Can’t you ask? Did you? I’m sorry but, Holly I read that report and we’re uh, we’re talking about completely rewriting human history to include a indeterminate length period where we went to space, conquered a constellation’s worth of stars, and ate shit and died and left absolutely nothing behind but one ruin hovering around Jupiter, so forgive me I’m being a bit of a skeptic for having to ask if any of that was true, or if Salome was just taking whatever you actually said and running with it.”

There’s an itch in the back of my head again, no, more like a hand gripping firmly on my brain, “I guess? Yeah! Is it so hard to believe that there’s something we’ve all missed? Like it still doesn’t feel real to me and I’m, I’m the one she has to speak through.”

“How does that work anyway? Have I been talking to her about all this? Or have you uh, just been repeating everything I say back to her?”

Yes is the first thing that comes to mind, she’s telling me to say yes, to make it clear that I am a mouth for her to speak through even as I try my best to squirm out of it. In the end I say, “You’re sort of talking to the both of us, I’m not… sure how it all works really, she can pop right in at any given time but she can’t really, at least I think she can’t literally make me do anything when I’m outside the armor.”

“The armor? Is that what Typh-Ea calls herself?” Cynthia says.

“What? No. Again it’s-” I remember the searing heat throughout my body, the certain knowledge that whenever I meld with her the suit will be there just the same, waiting for me. A thought occurs, would she even want me to talk about it? What would she do if I said anything? “Nevermind.”

“Okay then, well I think I’ve bothered you enough for now. I’m sure that you’re… doing your best to sort through all of this yourself, but uh, I’m always, well not here, but I’ll check in every now and then, you know, in case you’d want to talk about all this with someone other than the guards,” Cynthia said, already starting to go through the motions of leaving.

“Thank you, but I mean, I’m not stuck here right? I can always go to town or invite some of my friends over if I want to.”

“Uh, are you sure you want to do that? There’s a bit of a risk you know? Of someone else doing that again when… We uh, we don’t know how far you can go right? Putting yourself back together like that…” there’s a very perceptible tinge of actual concern in Cynthia’s voice, but Typh-Ea reassures me to not back down as she will not relinquish her hold on me that easily, something about struggling to put me back together even if I was 247 diced cubes kept screaming in acid, it’s not very comforting.

“I think it’s the worth the risk, and I wouldn’t be that useful for Salome if everyone thinks I’m already dead right? Maybe that’s why they haven’t shown up yet, maybe they’re all just, waiting to see if I’m still around.”

“I guess, but I’m just saying, anyone else in your position would be dead already,” she lets out a sigh, and brushes off a strand of hair from her shoulder, “You should probably talk to her about all this yourself though, I’m not really….”

A thought occurs, “Think she’d be more likely to say yes if I say you’re coming with me?”

“What? No, probably not, I’m not even armed or anything,” Cynthia said, not getting it at all.

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

I go back to awkwardly eating my already cold meal, and it doesn’t take long before the professor finishes her drink, and leaves. I make sure to try and mumble out a goodbye even through a full mouth.

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I’m sitting in my room, still mulling over how I’d break it to her when it happens. The phone rings and shakes inside of my hand as Salome jumps my gun and calls me and I absentmindedly click through to accept it before I could wonder why. I can feel Typh-Ea watching me once more as I take a deep breath, and raise the phone up to my ear and force myself to smile.

“Hi Ms. Tzeitman, it’s funny, I was just about to call you actually.” my tone is a little flat, polite maybe but not really in an encouraging way. A familiar pressure in the back of my mind figuratively nudges me in the shin to pipe up and take charge of the whole thing.

“Oh, so you already know Holly? That saves me a lot of time actually, did she send you a missive first or do you and your mech just have a sixth sense for it? How does that work exactly?” Salome says.

“Know what?” I say in response, already thrown completely off course.

“Well I guess she’s all over the news by now so you would know already, but you’re good for it right Holly? Rested, ate, went to the bathroom and took care of business already?” Salome says, continuing to mostly ignore me.

“No I’m, Ms. Tzeitman what are you talking about?” I reach out to the nearby remote and click the TV on and that’s when I see it: hazy from the ground phone footage of a massive metallic thing set in bronzes and black metal too big to properly capture floating close enough to the top of the buildings to almost but not quite scrape off the rooftops, and the caption, “Duke Message Real? Giant metal beast touches down upon New Madrid”.

“We got word of it just before the press did Holly. The Duke finally sent one of his men down to challenge us, she’s on her way to the site right now and the reaction to this is just, you love to see it Holly. Everyone’s scared shitless now, most of these fuckers didn’t even buy that any of this was happening but now just look at it, she’s just out there making them all feel small.” 

A slight miscalculation, captured from another angle the giant’s foot brushes tenderly, lovingly almost for something of its size and strength against the side of an office, raining down glass shards and twisted steel at a crowd milling below that I can catch the briefest of glimpses of before the cameraperson starts running for their life.

And yet, Salome still sounds positively estatic as she says, “They’re going to love us when you tear her to shreds.”