Scene 6: Cyclic Familiarity

You stretch uncomfortably as you come to the next day, hyper aware of the grime and filth stuck to you as you get to your feet. You need to rinse yourself off. Your cloak is probably ruined beyond saving now, but you can still try to wash it?

The sky is uncharacteristically clear as you step out onto the sky bridge. It has been a while since you've been in your can after all; the last of your can's rain has probably exhausted itself. It'll still continue to release a bit of steam here and there, doing the minimum of processing to keep the rest of the structure intact, but without you in it it's mostly just in stasis.

This means whatever rain comes your way now is primarily from Five Pebbles' output. The sky around his can in the far distance is stormy, like it always is these days; you watch the clouds for a while, watching how they dance around each other. What is he doing now, anyway? You both know his struggling is futile.

You drop the Miros quail beak a few times as you head down to the water, grumbling every time you do. It's almost half your size, and its weight matches its size. It'll be a lot easier to carry this around once you've actually made this into a weapon, but right now it is incredibly annoying to have it keep slipping out of your hands.

You leave your items, especially your bomb, somewhere dry as you wade into the water to clean yourself off. You swear you can almost feel the filth drifting off of you as you scrub at yourself. This is one upside of having so much water in your waste department, you suppose.

You're running very low on food. You should definitely pick some more up before heading to your heavy metal processing facility. If your biological processing facility is barren and devoid of food, your heavy metal processing facility will only be more scarce. You're not sure that patch of bubble seeds you harvested from prior still has any seeds left, so you'll have to look around a little for food.

Either way, you're eager to get going. You want to be out of here sooner rather than later.

>Get a sense of your surroundings and which ways you can go. And look for food while you're at it?

You're currently back at the base of the first building you entered your biological processing facility from, which—you pause in scrubbing yourself briefly to dig for the information—is probably the bar screening facility. The fertilizer processing plant is approximately to the north of you, the aeration facility is to the east, and the clarifier facility is to the west. If you go south now, you'll exit back to the general area of your waste department; you'll likely be taking that path so you can better plot how to get to the heavy metal processing facility.

You can always explore further north; there are more buildings here that you haven't been to yet, though you don't really have a purpose in exploring them anymore now that you have the Miros quail beak. There could be food that way, you suppose? You really have no idea where food could grow, or be found, in your waste department.

Your cloak is... mostly white again. Stepping out of the water, you wring it out as much as you can, staring down at the stains on it in disappointment. The gold hems are more a dirty yellow now, and the white cloth is less than pristine, but... at this point, you really should stop caring about it.

Eh. You strap your belongings back onto you, firmly tying the cloth back in place. You'll get used to it.

>Try going southwest, because clarifier facility sounds slightly more useful than aeration, maybe? (bold)Look for food(end bold) or other useful stuff there, and also keep an eye out for rocks or stuff you might be able to use to turn that beak into an EIGHT FOOT MEGALANCE OF DOOM!

(Forage successful.)

The clarifier facility is actually to the northwest, but you head that way regardless; it's as good a direction as any. You're going to prioritize getting food first, because while you hope to be out of here soon, you're honestly not sure how long this may take.

The Miros quail beak is very heavy. You flail about in the water briefly, trying to bring it with you, but with your hands full and the deadweight of the beak, you're stuck floundering. You eventually give up and leave it where it is. You can just come back for it later; there isn't anything that would want a hunk of metal anyway.

... probably. You would be very surprised if you're wrong.

There's a lot of activity today. Leeches blithely glide around you, only to be plucked out of the water by river mice, which carefully keep their distance. Further away, you see the silver lizard colony splashing around in the water; the higher spray is from the hatchling, you presume. The sun shines brilliantly down on you all, the light glinting off the water as you swim, bright points of white in contrast with the duller, more colorful pips of color from the diving river mice.

Even the flora seem to be enjoying the day, because you come across a generous patch of bubble seeds floating near the side of your clarifier facility. You quickly harvest around half the patch. (+5 bubble seed)

It's... almost calm, right now. An idyllic sunny day. The sky is blue, the clouds are fluffy... you stare up at them for a while.

>It's the hatchling! You need to get over there and get its trust and acquire it as a newfound lifelong companion RIGHT NOW go go go. Get over to the lizard colony (approach carefully) and offer them some food as a peace treaty, and tell them you can help them find more food and live a long exciting life with many adventures if they go with you in friendship and goodwill c'mon c'mon.

You stare at the overseer. "No. I have better things to do." You glance back at where you know Five Pebbles' can is; you can't see the clouds from here, but you know how perpetually angry they look. "And if I did, I'd just be risking their lives."

>In that case, look around for something you can use to make that Miros beak into a proper weapon? A sharp... sharpening rock, or something?

(Search successful.)

The overseer in front of you does an exaggerated swaying motion, its arms wildly spinning around in... despair? You huff. "Why do you care? You're not the one having to deal with the lizards."

There is still gore attached to the beak, which you'd need a rock or spear or some other sharp object to scrape off. You turn in a circle in the water; while not as full as a prior cycle, your biological processing facility is still considerably flooded. There are no exposed pieces of rock or rebar you can pull off from the walls of your clarifier facility, so you'd need to dive to search for tools in this immediate area. You can't do that right now though, because you still have your bomb on you. You don't want to get it wet. You'll need to set that down first, and really, you should have done that earlier, but you hadn't thought to do so.

That aside, you're... apprehensive about diving. You can hold your breath, sure. Your lungs aren't just for show. You could probably adjust your focal point to be able to see underwater too, but you're not particularly keen on submerging yourself so fully. Especially when you're barely able to paddle on the surface as it is.

With a small sigh, you make your way back to where you left the beak. You find your footing on the ground below soon enough, and you scoop up the first rock you see floating in the shallows. It's sufficiently sharp, so you can now work on cleaning the flesh off. (+1 rock)

You stop in your tracks as you see the thick white tail twitching in the entrance of the access shaft, directly over where you left the Miros quail beak. It's not a silver lizard; it's way too big, even for the adults.

The salamander turns to look at you as you creep a little closer, bright pink gills flickering in dull acknowledgement of your presence. It then turns back to the beak, carefully gnawing on the flesh still attached. Apparently it's been at this for a while, because around half of what used to be there is gone.

>Let the salamander do its thing. And sorry for the other overseer's enthusiasm—they really like lizards. Can you make a carry-pouch with the materials you have?

You snort as you walk over to the wall, sitting down and leaning back against it. An overseer, apologizing for the actions of another of its brethren. Maybe you all underestimated how much agency these things have.

You watch the salamander as it works on the meat; you have no objection to letting it clean the beak off, and you don't want to walk over and shove it away from the beak either. You are a little perplexed about how it doesn't seem to care about your presence. Maybe you just don't look threatening enough. You certainly don't look appetizing, since you're pretty obviously made of metal.

A carry pouch or some sort of external bag would be a good idea, but you don't have the means to make one right now. You only have your cloak and its meager carrying capacity. You could probably make one somehow, but you highly doubt you'd be able to find materials for it in your waste department. Plant matter would likely be the best option, especially dried plant matter, something your waste department is not particularly abundant in.

With a disgruntled snuffle, the salamander turns away from the Miros quail beak, ambling back to the water. You head over to take a look at its handiwork, and grimace; the bulk of the flesh is gone, but not all of it, and the beak is now covered in lizard slobber.

It's marginally preferable to the gore, you suppose. You quickly use your rock to scrape off the last of the flesh while touching the beak as minimally as you can. It comes off easily, much to your relief, and before long the beak is entirely free of Miros quail flesh. Tossing the remnants of the Miros quail into the water, you drag the beak with you to rinse it and your hands off.

The salamander is still here, and it smoothly paddles over as you step into the water again. You eye it warily as it languidly snaps up the flesh you scraped off. While it doesn't seem to view you as either a predator or prey, you still don't want to get too comfortable around it. It's around your height, and if it changes its mind, you're not in a good position to fight it.

>Keep a careful distance from the salamander (and be prepared to STAB IT TO DEATH if it attacks), but toss a bubble seed at it to see if that will make it friendlier to you? Do they even eat bubble seeds?

It's a salamander, so no. They're obligate carnivores. Only silver lizards are omnivorous, and even then they prefer a diet of meat. You suppose the hatchling was young enough that a vegetarian meal was still appealing to it.

You hold out one of your bubble seeds to the lizard regardless; it can't hurt to try. Now drifting in the water, the salamander stares at you with beady eyes, making no move to inspect the food you're holding out to it. It then turns its back to you and begins swimming away with powerful strokes of its feet, its thick tail helping propel it through the water. You shrug and pocket the food again. More for you.

Now that everything is situated, you're set to head off to your heavy metal processing facility. You waste no more time gathering your belongings, hefting the Miros quail beak back into your hands, and you start heading to the new area.

It's a decent trek. Your waste department is a lot bigger than you thought. You splash through a variety of puddles and stumble over multiple dips and depressions in the ground on your way to the heavy metal processing facility, all while trying to keep line of sight on the pipes you know lead to the facility. You really have no idea where you're going, but you're going... somewhere? You're pretty sure you identified this pipe as going towards your heavy metal processing facility a few cycles back.

To your relief, you wind up in a considerably more industrial looking part of your waste department before long. The pipe you were following terminates inside the building ahead of you. Distantly, you hear the roar of what you hope are furnaces from the building to your right. You should be able to get something to smelt onto the beak here.

>Towards the furnaces, then! Your EIGHT FOOT MEGALANCE OF DOOM shall come to fruition! All will tremble before your might!

You're... not sure if you're as eager about that as this overseer is, but you veer off to the right anyway, heading towards the sound of the furnaces. Even from this distance, they're rather loud. Not that that would normally be a concern, but the closer you get, the louder it is. It's hard to think through all the noise.

Locating the access door is simple enough, but the moment you shut it behind you, your senses are endlessly assaulted by the screeching of metal scraping against metal and the roaring of the furnaces. The sound is all around you; you can't tell where anything is. You dampen your auditory sensitivity with a wince, but even still, the sheer volume of sensory input makes it incredibly difficult to pinpoint anything.

You're standing at... one end of the processing plant. There's tracks of what look to be metal scraps crisscrossing above your head. The overpowering heat in this building is coming from... somewhere ahead of you, you're not sure where. There's too much machinery in the way for you to tell right now.

First things first, you need something to weld the beak to. And then you can find where the furnaces are.

>Hey dig through the scrap piles and the sludge piles and the trash piles to see if we can find a handle for our weapon. Pretty please.

(Search unsuccessful.)

That... none of that is here. There's no sludge. No trash piles. Not really any scrap piles—that's probably good. Scrap metal stays on the scrap metal tracks. It should anyway.

You glance around. Nothing immediately in view. Lots of machinery around you, and noise, but there's no loose pieces of metal you can see right now and you can't just pull something out, but...

You can't think at all. You deafen yourself entirely and take your leave, shutting the access door behind you as fast as you can. The overpowering heat is replaced by the relative coolness of the day outside, and you sigh in relief. You should... prepare for that onslaught of information input before you go back in. You could probably deal with the noise or the heat on their own, but together, it's just too much.

Actually. You glance up at the sky, watching the storm clouds on the horizon approach. You should do that after the rain passes.

... which building is the sorting building? You know there's Miros vultures in that one, and while they're supposed—supposed—to be docile, you're not sure you want to try your luck with them. You don't want to take shelter in the building you just left, but you're not sure what else is left. If you kept yourself deafened, you could... probably deal with it?

>Look around different parts of HM to find a place to stay when the rain comes? Heat might keep away the water? Maybe???

You dig through your memory for what scraps of information you have about your heavy metal processing facility. There's the sorting building, and... the building you just left is the smelting factory. There is also... a purification sector—you won't be heading there, since there will be vats of acid and alkali—and an effluent treatment sector. The last building is possibly your best shot at riding out the rain without being assaulted by a never ending barrage of sensory input.

You don't know where that is, but you can make a wild guess. You set off on a brisk walk away from the smelting factory, heading towards the other nearby building. Considering it's connected to the pipe from biological processing... could this be the sorting facility? You really don't know. How you wish you'd downloaded more information about your waste department beforehand.

Passing what you assume to be the sorting facility, another building looms ahead of you. This one looks more compact and tightly sealed than the smelting factory and the sorting facility. It must be the effluent treatment sector. You hasten your pace towards it.

... this really has been your entire journey so far, isn't it? This constant fluttering between shelters, scavenging for supplies and running from the rain. You were once the cause of this once; is this how the creatures on your facility grounds felt?

Maybe it's ironic that you're running from Five Pebbles' rain, then. Or maybe it's fitting. You don't know.

An access shaft; you sigh in relief. You waste no time entering it, shutting the door behind you. It slams shut without a sound, and you stare at it in confusion for a few seconds until you remember you turned your auditory processing systems off. You flick them back on to the sound of, predictably, water flowing through pipes. It's no surprise that these buildings are designed similarly. It actually looks remarkably similar to your aeration facility.

>Get your bearings, find a good place to shelter? Not much else to do here, so far...

Yes, not much else to do, except the very same thing you've been doing over and over again.

What an odd familiarity.

The passageways look generally the same, and appear to function the same too. It's not long until you find your way to an access room; you enter it, shut the door behind you, and drop the Miros quail beak as you sink down to the ground with a sigh, tucking your face into your knees. Safe here from the rain for now, same thing as before.

You have an understanding of how the various fauna of this world should operate. Governed by their cycles as they are, they're still only vaguely aware of the broader mechanisms of what binds them to this world. They know to eat, they know to run, they know to hide when the rains come. Rains that you contributed to.

Huddled here, inside the depths of yourself—or maybe what used to be you; do you hold claim to these facilities anymore?—you understand more than ever the faint but always persistent claustrophobia, the chronic fear of the storm on the horizon, the deep rooted knowledge that no matter what you do, no matter where you run, the rain is inescapable. It will come and destroy whatever dares face it, tearing it to shreds, leaving only carnage in its wake. However long it passes, it will always return, and you are always stuck running.

You're not an animal. You're an iterator. But maybe you're no better than an animal.

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