[ Through the Gate ] Red x Tarmagon

[Red Sinfonia]

As the Ryan clipped away at the forgiving lights of a dappled, steel machine, which depressed and gave beneath a soft gesture, there was a strange torrent of feelings and war within himself that buzzed down the length of their psychic chord. There was no direct stream of thought that passed between them, no words that formed as bluntly as they had before, but whispers that lurked on just the perimeter, jumbled and wiry as one's own thoughts tended to be. Kelsi watched him curiously, the top of her body leaning slightly forward as if becoming physically closer to him could clear the roughage that made the thoughts barely discernible.


That was when she noticed that the pink of his cheeks had morphed into a different shade, as if in tandem with the wind of emotions blowing through him. Though still unclear, she could a certain gist. Different... human enough... nudity... distracting... lovely. There was something that he was uncertain about, smoothly forming the undertone of the thoughts, but the words did not seem to coincide. Especially with the acquiescence to find her a more comfortable skin.


As if the emotions, regardless of their human origin, clicked into place, Archon looked down at the physical form she had pulled together after she'd first come to the world and her consciousness had shattered across the plane, wherein she'd become this. There was something about it that was making him create indecision. The first words that she'd picked up seemed to describe her situation.


There was no denying that there was a difference between Archon and the Ryan. Having seen female humans in her earlier escapades, she recognized that the lumps of fat on her chest were part of the human system, and that other things, like the tendrils on her skull, the lack of a white part of her eyes, the protruding hip, and aether vents on her sides, were not. She supposed that fit the second part 'human enough', though she was unsure of enough for what? Nudity seemed to make a connection, the word that described without being held in a second skin or exoskeleton, though the last two brought about more question.


Archon could not reason as to what would be distracting, other than the suit that the Ryan had offered for her to put on. Was he recognizing the way that the damned thing distracted her, constantly causing some amount of discomfiture because it hadn't given in on a certain joint or expanse of flesh? Yes, that would make sense. He had been understanding so far. He had made sure to keep her calm and comfortable. He was probably thinking on what to find her that was less distracting.


The last was only a partially strange word, but Archon struggled immensely to see the connection with the rest. There was a sort of undertone to it that didn't have quite the same accompaniment as the scrambled thoughts prior. When she was working to understand its relevance, the Ryan noticed her watching, and paused. A wash of embarrassment crossed between them, quiet and subtle, and her brow worked together. Now she was just confused. Was he embarrassed about finding her something less distracting to wear?


'What's lovely?' Kelsi finally asked, her unblinking eyes steadying on the details of his face, as if they would betray the meaning there. Just as she'd thought it, more connections were made, crossing with the tones of emotion and feeling beneath the thoughts and between them. It had been in conjunction with her speaking, faint flickers of imagery that wound themselves around her voice. 'My voice is lovely?' That was curious, tacking onto the fact that she was still troubling over herself with what 'lovely' truly was. It seemed like a fun word, but something about its connotation eluded her. 'Still sounds like garbling to me,' she thought. Garbling didn't seem like something that should connect with lovely, so she moved on and sidled up next to the Ryan, looking at the screen. 'What is this?' She questioned. She'd seen them before, when she'd been strolling around on her own, but she'd never witnessed them being used. 'How does it work?' She asked, before mischievously sneaking a hand in and stroking a key. Its subsequent 'click' was all too satisfying and she smiled pleasantly. 'Is the not-distracting second skin in there? The new one? How do you get it out? How long will it take?'

 

[Tarmagon]

"What's lovely? My voice is lovely? Still sounds like garbling to me. What is this? How does it work? Is the not-distracting second skin in there? The new one? How do you get it out? How long will it take?"


Before he could frame a reply, Kelsi had snaked out a hand and pressed one of the keys on the keyboard he had just used to query the bases supply system. Fortunately, he had already submitted his request, so he discreetly cleared the keystroke and locked out the keyboard. The flood of questions flowing into his mind let him know Kelsi had definitely been following his thoughts, but the connections were a little jumbled.


"Yes Kelsi," he replied, keeping his voice level. "Your voice is very lovely. This is called a keyboard, and it lets me talk to the computer that runs this base. I don't know the full programming that makes it work, so I can't tell you. No, the new clothes are not in there, but the computer knows where they are, and can have them sent to me. As for how long..."


Ryan was interrupted by a quiet ding, and small door slid open in one of the room's walls. Ryan walked over and extracted a bundle from the exposed alcove, which promptly closed with a soft hiss. Ryan took the package over to the desk and opened it, shaking out several pieces of cloth and looking at them appraisingly before nodding and turning back to Kelsi.


"Remember how you put the decompression suit on?" he asked, meeting Kelsi's alien eyes squarely. "Do what you did to put it on in reverse order. Once you've done that, we can get you into something looser. The other humans are going to object, but I can tell them that you don't breathe and are not subject to decompression worries."


With that, Ryan resolutely turned back to the packet of clothing. carefully laying out a long, loose skirt in a shade of blue that he hoped would compliment Kelsi's, unusual, skin tone. An equally loose fitting white peasant blouse joined the skirt, and thank the gods there were so many female personnel on this base that this had been in the supply system. He contemplated the plain underwear and shook his head with a sigh.


"How am I going to explain the concept of underwear to her?" he mused, once again forgetting that his thoughts were no longer quite as private as they had been. "The whole concept of clothing is so alien to her. I'm amazed she understood the suit as rapidly as she did. How on earth... well, how on luna am I going to explain multiple 'skins'?"

 

[Red Sinfonia]

With all the careful patience any human could hope to muster, the Ryan waited out Kelsi's barrage of questions until she realized that her furious mental attack could elicit feelings of unpleasantness. More than anything, she'd witnessed those in the place in between, where the human was subject to her all-encompassing sensory phenomena, but it was better to be safe that the past did not repeat itself. Once she quieted, she knew that she'd receive the answers that she'd been questing for.


So strange, Archon mused, to wait out this delay, when the entanglement of two phenomena played out rapid fire, touch voicing the questions and touch projecting the answers, simultaneously. Like the electric impulses bursting across the synapse of a human brain. Brows pulling forward in question again, Archon realized that she did not know why she understood that simile, just that she did. In that moment, the appropriate time had passed, and Kelsi was rewarded with answers. The clear communication of the Ryan entered her mind, washing itself over the strange thoughts, and reestablishing her in the moment.


Slightly more determined than before, if so that her mind did not wander into strange corners, Kelsi intricately focused on the Ryan's reply. Despite the blank expression she held, several more pieces of a vast puzzle clicked rapidly into place. "My voice," she spoke aloud, touching two fingers to her chest. Yes, that was it... the word that she had used earlier, that held possession of the self, opposite of the other word. "Your voice is..." she said, working it out within and turning those two fingers to his chest. 'Garbling.' The lone thought formed a smirk on her lips, elicited a bizarre feeling in the chest that wound itself up her throat as a light, musical sound. Humor, she thought. A joke.


The other connections between physical object and abstract object, such as the place, had been made, but Archon was aware of her fast observations and was no longer amused by trifling progress. If the Ryan had asked her, she would have been able to point out and say the keyboard, understood the computer was a network sheathed in metal that extended beyond the connections of the keyboard, and that the base was where they were, all sewn together using his thoughts in conjunction with the movements of his lips. The filler inbetween were harder to discover, but she was beginning to understand their structural uses. 'The' for example, was becoming more obvious, as an introduction to a title, 'it' was a sort of establishment, and 'and' conjoined his thought patterns.


The unwrapping of the new clothes was particularly exciting and Kelsi did not hide her excitement as the Ryan loosed them from their bounds. Immediately, she began moving her finger along the lines of the suit, sighing with a certain delight when they peeled from her flesh. After being fully naked once more, and briefly wondering why the humans did not partake or approve of its simple pleasure, Kelsi looked over the pieces that he had extracted for her.


Reaching over, they felt soft, lacking the slickness of the tight material. There seemed to be no lines to close its expanse against her skin. With an expression bordering approval, she picked up the flowing skirt and pulled it up her long legs. For a moment, she paused. It was close around her hips, but did nothing to staunch her movements. It did not close around the creases of her flesh or make her skin crawl, but it did hide them beneath its rippling fabric. After came the blouse, which was similar to the skirt in its occasional close fit, enough to keep the article in place, but gratuitous with its freedom. As she donned both, the Ryan's concerns about the small, triangular white piece before them both, did not elude her.


'It is like wearing both a suit and an exoskeleton, is it not?' Archon questioned across their bond, a tad indignant. 'But I must wonder... how many layers do humans cover themselves in?' Her attention turned from the piece to him. She reached forward and gently pinched the suit on his skin. 'How many skins must you wear? Do you not feel trapped?'





While the Ryan had been swamped in his own thoughts, he'd transmitted their slight meanings, and Kelsi lifted the small piece. Inspecting it, she held it by two ends and connected it with meaning to the anatomy of her current form. 'What does it do?' As she questioned it, she slipped it under her skirt and pushed her legs through the holes. She sidled it up her body and stood there, hands suspended and gaze questioning. She didn't understand it. What purpose had they, besides constantly reminding her of lower body parts?


Either way, the more human gestures she made, the more the Ryan seemed both impressed and appreciative. With that in mind, Kelsi lowered her hands and thought little more of it. While she was not exactly amused with it enclosing pieces of her, she was comfortable against the softness of the cloth. Sure that she had put all on correctly, she relaxed her body. 'I think that I am ready, Ryan,' she proclaimed, infused with both feelings of derangement and excitation in her new garb, generating a smirk on the corner of her lips.

 

[Tarmagon]

An unnamed base, Antarctica.





"Damned mercenary thug," Augustus Jameston muttered as he meticulously examined the Portal engine for any signs of strain. "Years of research, billions or dollars, and the first person to travel via dimensional portal is a frigging mercenary barely smart enough to dress himself without orders!"


The quiet hum of the massive Polaris generators in standby mode should have been soothing to the physicist, but instead them seemed to be mocking him, underscoring the massive injustice of it all. Instead of Professor Slidel, instead of one Augustus Jameston, instead of one of the vastly more qualified and deserving scientists who had sweated their blood out over the Portal engines for years, a slope browed neanderthal had been their emissary attempting to make contact with the life form that had emerged from their portal.


"Well," he muttered, moving over to a console to check the power feeds, "According to the reports from Luna he did prevent one of his ilk from injuring the entity."


That thought stoked his fury afresh, and one Augustus Jameston, PhD. made himself step away from the console and take a deep breath. He closed his eyes, struggling with his sense of injustice and fury at the universe as he stood in one of the support rooms underneath the Portal room. He never heard the slight hiss as a fragment of inky blackness slithered from under one of the massive machines, never saw the pseudo-pod rise up from it to point in his direction. He was totally unaware of anything but his towering fury and sense of being wronged, right up until a band of ice clamped around his ankle, sending a wave of oblivion coursing through him.


The body of Augustus Jameston opened its eyes, and looked around the room curiously. It took a halting step towards one of the massive machines, then another. After a few steps, it was moving smoothly, and reached out to caress the machine almost lovingly.


"This will do. This will do nicely. We shall no longer be Between. We shall be Here. We shall be free."