[b]Eli:[/b]

“Yeah, I know.” Eli lies. It’s the best you’re going to get, it’s a sign he actually really likes Green that he’s actually lying about it for her sake. “Wait, shit, actually-” He practically climbs on top of Green like a pirate on a crow’s nest steering her to face what he’s looking at. “Fucking fursuiter at 8 o’clock. Holy shit we’ve got a live one, baby.” He’s cackling with delight.

“Okay, so here’s the deal,” he rubs his cheek practically against Green’s ear while holding her head facing the guy in a lion fursuit, “these days fursuiters are just cops. Like a really good fursuit is just as expensive as getting mods, it’s just that you can take it off after. Cops had a few of these really expensive ones made so they could fit in the old crowd, and now nobody’s told them it looks like a road flare. We still got a few minutes to kill, we have to go fuck with ‘em.” They turn Green’s head so they’re staring eye-to-eye just an inch apart from their eyelashes touching. “For the article.”

[b]Knightly:[/b]

He thinks about it, nods. “I like the part of the plan where it’s something I’d want to do anyway. Should we check their calendar and do some bugs first, though? If I’m going to do a blackmail operation, I feel like it makes sense that I get some better material behind me first.” He blinks. He looks tired and frazzled, even as he’s energized to finally [i]do something[/i]. “Or aren’t we doing that part anymore?”

[b]Dragon:[/b]

Your pod is slowed by tin vapor, held buoyant as it condenses in an invisible web of electromagnetism. You’re drawn in on the currents of it as it cycles back in like cyclical breaths, to take in more heat to vent again. In and out, a liquid metal tide. 

It’s incredible. I was about to say it’s like an oasis in the desert, but it’s more profound than even that. The nothing-blackness extends in all directions. It doesn’t even look black, because something has to be [i]there[/i] to be black. There isn’t even black until you look impossibly far into the distance, and you can see that far because there is [i]nothing[/i] between you and that distance for lightyears. Barely even atoms.

Except for this one ignoble spot in the emptiness. Here there is a factory of factories. 

Your pod is drawn deeper into the heart of the factory. Dragon has made everything he needs to make everything he needs here, connected each piece with loose tethers so it can’t entirely drift away from him. Furnaces, forges, molds, anything that can be done with machinery simplistic enough it doesn’t need a robotic arm. The rest has to be done by his hands, his intricate Orochi-upgraded claws, but if something could [i]possibly[/i] be done with less than that, then the task was automated. Just in case he was wrong about needing more than one of something.

What must be hundreds of these billow out from the distant center. The infrastructure is incredible, it’s like if someone couldn’t order a cupboard from IKEA, and instead of taking up carpentry, they just [i]made their own IKEA[/i]. Then they took that and dispersed it out into the outer wilds like pollen from a dandelion sneeze. 

It’s the sheer scope of the factory being cooled that spreads the tin mist out far enough that even its microscopic forces are enough to catch you. The tides pull you to Dragon, eight gleaming white heads on a familiar body, a modernized and enhanced version of the body you remember building Aevum with. 

He’s curled up on the top of a cylinder about the size of baseball pitch. Lightning blue glow radiates from donut-shaped windows in its top, and Dragon sleeps on a smoked glass disk at its center, peering down inside it. Below you’d see the dense black allow hollow of the thruster, crenellations in the disk like the ridges of an internally-toothed gear. 

His foot twitches as he sleeps. He’s dreaming.