'...It's warm.'
The first thing Ester realized when his consciousness came back in full from a deep sleep was the warmth currently wrapped around his body, most prominently located around his chest.
Opening up a pair of bleary eyes, after several moments of adjusting to the dim light of a power saving screen, Ester found out that the source of the warmth was one Eva currently snuggling up into him.
Arms wrapped around his body as she buried her head into his chest, it seemed that he died and went to heaven.
Except he was pretty sure heaven didn't smell like blood.
Or maybe it did, only the architects and those religious nuts would know.
Shifting slightly in Eva's grasp as he became more and more aware of his own condition, Ester became aware of the respirator filtering stale air in and out of the mask fitted around his face, the heady scent of blood trapped within its confines.
'My blood at that so... I'm not dead yet.'
Feeing a scratching thirst appear in his throat as he realized that fact, Ester shifted slightly in Eva's grasp, his hands finding Eva's clasped around the small of his back.
Carefully prying her fingers apart in an attempt to keep her sleeping it seemed his attempt to do so was noticed by the person in question as she opened her sleepy eyes.
Grey eyes staring into his own, after several moments of silent tension, her fingers moved across his back as she opted back to the silent language they shared when the speakers let out a brief scattering of static.
Her fingers softly tap danced against his back and spoke [Good morning sleepy head.]
There was no voice coming from her speaker due to equipment malfunctions but it was as if he could still hear the mechanical monotone that wasn't really monotone coming from her.
'Is it morning already?' Ester tapped her back in reply. 'And here I was preparing to meet the old man in the night.'
Eva's grey eyes flashing with an undercurrent of emotions as her fingers tap danced on his back.
[I nearly did last night.]
Ester's fingers froze for a brief moment before he chuckled and tapped onto her back. 'Doesn't that mean I'm in the lead?'
[What do you mean?] Eva asked with both her eyes and in her fingers.
'It means that you owe me for saving your life.'
[Ah.] Eva's fingers stalled in place for a moment before they continued. [If we're talking about how you saved my life from that plane wing then I should be the one in the lead.]
'What.'
[You don't get it do you you big idiot?] She lightly grabbed the back of his neck, her fingers continued to dance against his back. [You nearly died.]
Ester blinked.
Driving the driller through the trash rain was hard, but it wasn't that hard... was it?
Furrowing his brows as he recalled how he had to account for the danger of the trash, the trajectories of this dangerous trash, the shape of the ground chasms all the while keeping enough brain power to keep the Driller running it seemed that...
'It was that hard huh?'
'...That makes things even at most.' He replied with several taps of his fingers once he finished. 'How are you in the lead?'
[If we don't count the time where I saved your ass from that raider-] 'Then I saved yours the very next second.' [-And from that highly radioactive parasite that made you glow in the dark-] 'You fed that damned thing to me.' [Then we should count the time where you nearly died from a heart attack.]
'...To clarify are you talking about last night's events or some other time?'
[Last night]
'...That's just one, how are you in the lead?'
Eva tapped her forehead against his, failing to hide the slight flush in her ears. [We live on a trash planet Ester, math isn't our strong suits.]
'It is when you have to calculate coordinates on the fly.'
[I'm taking away your snuggle privileges.]
Feeling the source of the warmth on his chest swiftly slip away to the downstairs world, Ester cursed the world for taking his only source of warmth in this cold cruel world...
Then he followed her once he properly put on his respirator.
---
Dropping down from the upstairs vent world into the downstairs cockpit world, it was a world of difference.
The main difference between the worlds was the big plane wing announcing its presence.
'I should probably check the side panels to see what that thing hit.'
Making a mental note to look through the upper world to see the extent of the damage the plane wing caused by falling through the upper world, Ester turned to assess the damages in the lower world.
To put it nicely, the Driller wasn't going anywhere any time soon.
To put it bluntly however, the Driller was fucked to capabilities below 100%... which in hindsight should now be less then 85% since most of the parts were still being repaired when Phase 2 happened.
If Ester had to make a rough estimation of the Driller's current capabilities then he would have put it at... an optimistic 50% now.
Having torn a hole through the ceiling to enter destroying whatever the void was unfortunate enough to be in it's path, outside of the obvious problems of having a hole in the roof of your five year old home, the plane wing had lodged itself deep into the machine.
There was a chance that the plane wing had broke a hole through the faraday's cage when it lodged itself into the Driller, but he had to check to be sure since the power was shot by some other problem plaguing the Driller in light of recent events.
*Cough Fuck Project Void *Cough
'What a weird cough.'
Ignoring the confused eye that Eva was giving him, time passed as he assessed the damages with her.
The percentage was definitely not reaching 50% anymore.
"So... to sum it all up, alongside the poisoned air leaking in from the outside contaminating the water supply and overloading the air filters." Ester started off with two raised fingers as he stared at the large hole in the ceiling.
[We have an engine that will blow up if we go over 50 km/h, a transformer that's gonna die in a few more days, a sulking judgement bellflower and a bunch of tainted Aether crystals.] Eva signed with her hands. [Did I miss anything?]
"Yeah, that big ass plane wing in our home."
[How could I forget?] Eva rolled her eyes as she glared at the plane wing hatefully, her hands swiftly forming the letters which led to the words. [It's not like I nearly died to it.]
"Do you want revenge against the inanimate object? I can help."
Eva's broken speaker let out a hiss of garbled speech as an actual hiss of air escaped her throat. [No, I'd rather have revenge against the guys who dropped the plane wing onto us in the first place.]
"Oh I can help with that as well!" Ester realized with a shout, hurriedly explaining to the visibly confused Eva. "When the Omni vision took over my vision for the fourth time unlike the other times I was able to hear them, guess what I heard?"
[Their names?]
"Yep!"
Eva's hands stalled in the air before she began to sign the words that she wanted to say.
[Do me a favor and tell me how many people exist on the trash planet.]
"More than two."
Eva rolled her eyes as she adjusted herself on his desks chair that had become lopsided at some point. [Don't be a smartass and give me a proper estimate.]
"Hard to give a proper estimate when so many people are coming and dying but... Maybe five to ten million people?"
[Now tell me how likely it is to find someone with those exact names amongst all those millions?]
"...I see your point now."
[Expand the population to the entire universe.]
"I said I see your point Eva, so why don't-" Ester blinked as a tidbit of knowledge suddenly surfaced in his mind, hurriedly changing his words before they left his mouth. "-I ask you something?"
[Ask what?]
"Won't the company employing those dumpers have a manifesto of these guys?"
[How about we fix the Driller before the Air filtration system has a stroke?]
Chuckling at the immediate change of the subject when it seemed like she would lose whilst ignoring the fact that he would've done the very same thing if he hadn't found a counter argument in the nick of time, he walked towards the very noticeable hole in the ceiling.
"Sure. Just pass me the sealant why don't you?"
---
The last five days were to put it bluntly, a lot.
Having had to repair everything that broke down during that debacle five days ago, everything but a few of the more finicky systems, the engine and the transformers were fixed using the things that he had scavenged from the new coating of unmelted trash coating the landscape.
Thankfully the finicky systems didn't include the nearly overloaded air filtration system or they would've been forced to use their respirators as a replacement, and that would chew through filters like a pig with chow.
While on the topic of finicky systems though. The Omni Vision ability Ester first came in contact with 20 days ago.
Activating it was like moving a muscle he never even knew he had.
Difficult, but thanks to the four previous experiences he was now able to use it albeit limitedly.
It was mostly used on things that he couldn't see like behind panels but the area he was able to perceive was tens of thousands of times smaller.
It would probably get better as time went on and he got more used to using it, but it was slow going.
Dropping the last of the processed meat cans into the Judgement Bellflower's glass pot, Eva's mechanical voice sounded out from behind him.
[E-Ester.]
"What's up?"
[We've r-reached our d-destination.]
"The city of mechaphiles?"
[T-the city of m-mechaphiles.]
They reached Junk Bunk
---
20 DAYS SINCE PROJECT VOID BUFFER FIRST FIRED ITS FLAMES
8 DAYS SINCE PROJECT VOID BUFFER FIRED ITS FLAMES THE SECOND TIME
8 DAYS SINCE THE CORRUPTED OF C-POINT BEGAN 'HER' HUNT
+++
This Tree's gut is having a civil war with a meal this tree had, might go off to the hospital if I'm feeling pretty
Treee