Yellow Rook; Defense

The conversation that went over the heads of the orphans was somewhat troubling to them. They were a sheltered folk that didn't know what others were doing with them or around them. The dolls that were made as their friends were being talked about as if they were some sinister plot by someone who had built the entire establishment for them. Many of them lowered their heads, wondering if this could be true, and that they'd been taken advantage of. They didn't want to believe it, especially since only good things had come of it based on everything they'd been through. Some of them hugged their dolls.

The Mechanica, who understood the emotions of the orphans would realize that this sort of talk was bad for them based on the assumptions and presumptions of two who didn't know what was going on exactly. It was as if they were poisoning the ears of the small children. So, the dolls, which already had a predetermined scenario for if such should happen, would start making mechanical noises like those of scanning computers, and immediately begin to disperse. Some of them would take the children off to different rooms or into bed, whilst others walked deeper into the orphanage and into a different area all on their own. The main room of the orphanage was left now only to the two that were conversing.

Wei could feel the shifting atmosphere of the room as Chita spoke. He didn't have some otherworldly sense to do this, but it just came naturally with being around people and children. Usually, they weren't very good at hiding what they were thinking and feeling, unless they were truly exceptional. He looked around at the individual orphans and their doll companions, before most exited the room, "Champion is simple. No fighters, cuz everyone was either run off or holed up inside this walled city somewhere, no money to be made. It makes sense that it's empty now," and then he stood to his feet, dusting himself off as he did so.

He grunted, "Well, I really ain't got nowhere else to go now, do I? I'm more, or less, a permanent fixture of this world until I die." He answered Chita. If she still wanted to investigate, then he was fine with that. There was nothing else that he had or needed to do. He was left to his own devices, after being expelled and cut off from the hive mind control Koudo would have had over him if he were still around.

He looked at Chita, briefly, before scratching behind his head and looking up towards the ceiling, "But there is a chakra signature on something in this place that has been bugging the crap outta me. I dunno what it is, but I gotta find." It was a shame the orphans had all been filed out by their respective dolls, but he could understand why the dolls had made the decision to remove them. Wei and Chita were still negative influences, Chita more so with her negative tone and the negative implications of what she had been saying.

Wei's eyes slowly searched across the surface of the ceiling, looking through it to see what exactly was on the second floor of this building that was pinging his chakra perception. He wasn't sure what he was looking for, exactly, but he was sure that he'd know it when he saw it. Usually, things that had chakra signatures were always outlined with the color that their chakra naturally took. Whatever he was looking for would have an outline.

Wei wasn't sure what Chita was talking about though, what he was sensing wasn't nearly on a level that related to either his or hers. It was very faint, almost nonexistent. It was a wonder at all that he was able to sense it at all because the chakra that had been infused into whatever it was had been slowly leaking out.  

He continued to search the ceiling until the highlighted outline of a rectangle stood out to his vision. He knew immediately that that was what he was looking for. He had to go get it.

"I can replenish my chakra the same way I've been doing my whole life." Wei responded assertively, moving from where he was standing at towards a staircase that would take him upstairs. "The mechanics of my body haven't, and won't change, it doesn't matter the universe." And that was something that he was 100% sure on. Chakra was what the combination of the physical and spiritual energies housed inside an individual's body was called. He didn't doubt that an alteration in this universe's laws of physics and energy had an effect on the beings born into it and the Tensei that had established it, but Wei would remain the same. It could be replenished with food and rest, just like the natural stamina of a body. The only time he needed to worry about outside energy sources was when he needed to absorb natural energy from the, huge shocker, nature around him to initiate Sage Mode. Or when he was in battle and absorbing enemy attacks, but those were always converted upon initiation of the absorption process.

"Anyway, I'm going up the stairs." He said to her, already halfway up them and searching the hallway to see what room the rectangle has been in.

Wei waved his hand to give her a head's up that he heard she was going ahead. He doubted that she saw it though, and continued up the stairs until he was fully on the second floor. Quietly, he walked the hallway, looking through the walls, and open doors, to see where the rectangle that he had seen was.

Wei figured that maybe it would be a good idea to broadcast his presence to any of the children and dolls that had taken refuge in any of the rooms. He didn't want them anymore fearful of him that they already were. "To any children and dolls up here, I'm not here to cause any harm, there's just something I'm looking for. It's small and rectangular. Maybe like a photograph." Truthfully, Wei really liked kids, and that wasn't just the lingering feelings of being fused with an individual that had a child of his own. Personally, he never thought that he would make a good father, before he had been fused with Koudo. All he ever did was spend his time drinking, smoking, and fucking, but being fused with Koudo and experience some of the things that he had had definitely had an impact on Wei as a person. One of those impacts was that maybe... he could be a pretty decent Poppa to some child somewhere.

The residents of the orphanage were all tending to their own things, enjoying the new reconstruction of what was once an old and dilapidated household. Their new friends, the dolls, were keeping the loneliest of them company, and they would play inside of their rooms happily.

The walls were polished and shining, as were the floors. They were mechanized, like many of the things here nowadays, with only the furniture and decor that was not part of the actual structure of the Orphanage being wooden or made of some other material that was not mechanized. When Wei gazed through the walls, he would be able to see the energy of the actual mechanics functioning, just as if he'd seen any normal chakra signature. It looked just like being able to see the wiring of any normal house, and wasn't anything more than that to the eye.

Some of the orphans were shy and would stop playing when they heard someone coming up. To them, the dolls would, like servants, go to shut their doors to give them privacy. Those who were more friendly would peek their heads out to look on at him from down the hall, with their dolls remaining alongside them. No one answered him, however, when he was speaking.

The orphanage was probably the most well refurbished building in the dilapidated land of Valparaiso, even among the buildings that surrounded it specifically. He could see that whatever, or whoever, had been in charge had certainly made painstaking efforts to make this place much more hospitable that it had been. All this amount too, though, was telling Wei that was he was looking for wasn't going to be in the walls or under the floor boards. The only remnants of the old that were still around were some of the furnishing.

He focused in on those things instead, looking for hidden compartments and the like in the rooms where the dolls hadn't sheltered the more shy children away. "Ah, there it is!" Wei proclaimed, seeing the rectangular shape in a secret compartment on the leg of one of the beds in the farthest bedroom from the stairwell. Thankfully, the door to the room hadn't been shut, and when he rushed over, not running but walking at a slightly faster pace, and peeked inside, there didn't look to be any children inside at all.

So he entered, figuring whoever this room belonged to was either occupied with their friends or that the room was just unoccupied. He walked to the bed, kneeling at the foot next to the left leg and carefully pulling it open. Instead, was a photograph, just as he had imagined.

"Who... is this?" He whispered to himself. On the slip of paper in his hand was the picture of a girl. She had mahogany colored skin with white hair and blue, vivid blue eyes. He didn't know the girl, obviously, but this picture was exactly the item that had the chakra signature that was bugging him the whole time. The reason it was bugging him, however, wasn't because it was there but because it was a chakra signature that he recognized all too well.


It was his own, or one with little variation from it. Almost like that of a relative, and a close one at that. "But who could she-!" Wei didn't have time to complete the thought before he felt a sudden, rapid outflow of a massive amount of energy. Not soon after he felt that, he could sense a lot of the mechanisms of this city begin to move and shift as if a mass prime directive had finally been given out. Wei didn't understand what was going on, but he knew that he needed to catch up with Chita.

Whilst the stranger perused the orphanage casually, a shift occurred in the atmosphere of the Mechanical village. In some of the windows, flying machines could be seen buzzing swiftly passed and toward an unknown destination, and many sounds of mechanical whirs and stirs could be heard all about. The children in the orphanage didn't seem to mind, as if hearing this sort of noise had become their custom. However to prevent the noise from building up, they each shut their doors and kept themselves shut in tight, and closed their windows (those of them that had windows).

Downstairs, one of the Servicemaids, who were the caretakers of the orphans and the Mechanica overseers of the dolls would walk up the stairs and begin to speak to the man who was inside. "Sir, it is time to leave. The village is undergoing a mechanical shift. Those not part of the systematic operation are bid to depart immediately." The words she spoke seemed both predefined and preset. The Servicemaid looked like any normal maid, except with shiny metal skin and hair that was wrapped up in a side ponytail. Her eyes glowed brightly like the light on any electronic device, and many of her features were blatantly mechanical, such as the smooth face devoid of ears and a nose, and the fingers that were sharp to a point like claws. "I am sorry for the inconvenience."

Wei whipped around to the sound of a voice in the doorway, and got an eyeful of the maid that had come. He was expecting that the Deacons were the ones that took care of the orphans, but he knew that he had been expecting too much. They had been too eager to leave Chita and himself with the orphans once they got orders from someone higher than themselves.

He turned his head back around to look down at the picture in his hand once more. He flipped it over, his finger carelessly covering a small scribble of a note in the corner on the back of the photo. "For Bhumi and Mira... friends forever... T.T." He searched his memory for any clues about the two names and wasn't disappointed. Mira was the original name of Koudo's pupil, Avia, and Bhumi, if he was correct, used to be the titular champion of Champion. The Golden Bruiser herself.

He flipped the picture back over, "That means you have, or had, some pretty powerful friends, whoever you are..." he whispered, figuring at least those people could be considered a lead. As far as he knew, Mira existed on Vescrutia, but it didn't necessarily mean that this universe didn't create a doppleganger for her. If it had, then that alternate version of Mira knew this girl and the Golden Bruiser. He'd have to find them.

Wei closed his eyes and smiled, rising to his feet as he did so and holding firmly to the picture, "Ah, you're right. I should be going now, sorry about this." Wei responded politely, bowing as well as a sign of good faith before he started out of the room. He stopped however beside the maid, scratching behind his head, "Haha, actually there's something I wanted to ask you, if I could?" He could tell, no matter how sophisticated the tech, that she was a bot like those dolls. She just looked much less human.

He pulled out the picture and showed it to the maid, "I'm... a father, looking for a child his wife abandoned during our separation. I'm actually looking for this girl in particular. Have you ever seen her before?" He figured asking this automated maid about the girl in the picture would give him a much greater lead than searching out for the other leads that he had been able to deduce himself. He hadn't forgotten that he needed to get to Chita though, this just seemed more important to him.

The Servicemaid scanned the picture and reviewed her memory banks. This particular Servicemaid was stationed in the orphanage along with the dolls, and therefore had a limited expansion beyond the standardized default memory that all Servicemaids collectively contained. A vast majority of it was limited to the perimeter of the Broken Homes Orphanage, so that was the limit of this one's information.

"Hmmm..." she hummed, many electronic buzzes going off as she made noise. Should she have been here before the mechanization of the Orphanage, the Servicemaid would not know, due to there being no Mechanica that had been part of the orphanage beyond the most recent time frame. "I'm sorry," she finally said, bowing her head, "This is before my time. I do not recall. This does not register." Unfortunately, whomever this person was, they existed here and also left before the Servicemaid and the other Mechanica inhabited the land. "Perhaps, you should try the next town over. The old Witch city. This is only a suggestion." The Servicemaid was made to be of as best service as possible, even if the possibility was limited. Her 'best' may not have been comparatively the 'best,' but it was all that she could do given her own capacity.

The sound of the other Mechanica droning about outside could be heard more vividly now, like planes in the sky flying low to the ground and like trucks in the street driving at a high speed down the highway. Others had more advanced sounds that couldn't be compared, and were unique to whatever Mechanica was making them at the time. The Servicemaid, knowing the language of the Mechanica, could hear them speaking to her with their mechanical noises, something like a tonal language all their own. She became more urgent, and her facial expression was the first thing to reveal this. "I'm sorry. You must depart now. Is that all?" Being polite, she was obligated to ask if she had completed her service, as a primary function, yet also had to serve her protocol as well simultaneously, which dictated that she escort the guest out, even as she asked if she could be of greater service.

Wei was afraid of that answer, but he had been expecting it and it didn't deter him. The picture looked pretty old. Even the scenery within it seemed show a Valparaiso before it's own collapse, before all the nature died. It was always a land of lawlessness.

He tucked the picture into his top, and nodded his head, "Yes, you've been very helpful." The Old Witch City it was then, after he dealt with whatever got all of the mechanica whipped into such a frenzy. The giant influx of activity, and that pulse of power before, were ill omens if had ever seen them. Chita hadn't come back to find him either, which meant that she probably found what she was looking for.

Wei continued past the maid, leaving with haste. He walked down the stairs, found the back entrance, which Chita used and the Deacons before her, and exited out of it as well. He took to a sprint down that corridor, which led him outside and standing in front of a corporate building. He hadn't paid it any mind himself when he and Chita came into this village of machines, but it looked oddly suspicious the more he stared up at it. With a flash of light in his eyes, he was able to see that Chita was inside and he made the trek inside to find her.

As the guest departed from the orphanage, the Servicemaid that tended to the orphans and their dolls would be quick to shut all of the doors, which was done electronically on command through the advanced circuitry in the house, and to return to her duties downstairs in the day room of the orphanage where everyone spent most of their time during the day when not in their respective rooms. To her, all of the events seemed natural, like people walking outside on a busy day. She was nowhere near troubled like the outsiders seemed to be. She resumed her normal duties with a smile on her face and without worry, knowing her Mechanica brethren were simply doing their jobs and none would dare hurt another one of them by their own will or command. Therefore, the orphanage was safe and sound, and so were the children.