Chương 219: LOG-210.

It didn't take long for signs of habitation to make themselves apparent. Cleaner walls and floors. A lack of rubble in a few places. I felt a brief bit of nostalgia for an instant as we travelled through a lone hallway that had been connected to the initial breach our party had passed through, talon running along a nearby door (visibly sealed shut with what almost looked like weld patterns marring its surface) and finding not even a hint of dust. Meticulous, just like the Pearls of Batch Two…

Casting a glance towards where the corridor seemed to taper off into a larger room, I pressed forward, idly noting that Atoll had been forced to duck her wired head low in order to avoid scraping it against the top of the ceiling. Our emergence into some kind of massive, cylindrical chamber was met with silence, and my eyes narrowed slightly as I did my best to pierce the darkness around us, hearing Patina and Violet whisper amongst themselves from behind me.

Idle chatter that wasn't suitable for an almost certainly dangerous environment, I'd need to give them a brief talk regarding those kinds of mistakes after- Movement. I tracked lithe red limbs as they scuttled away from the edge of a ruined balcony of some kind, one amongst a dozen others that dotted various parts of the cylinder around us. But my attention was wrestled away from the brief contact by a sudden roar of displaced air, the crackle of flames bringing my arms up in a defensive stance.

"Y O U C A M E?" Lips pressing together, I looked up. And up. Eyes widening somewhat as lightform patches that had certainly not been there a moment ago almost seemed to grow out from nothing, their translucent nature revealing them as the hardlight holograms that they truly were. Yet despite its status as an echo, that didn't stop the enormous burning Pearl staring down at us all from appearing any less impressive, the ambient heat emitted from her frame brushing against my face like the interior of a hot oven.

Before anyone else could speak, the giant (stars, she must have been the size of a building, at the very least) tilted her head, glazed eyes rapidly flicking between each member of our group, blinking once or twice before settling on me.

"Y O U. D A N C E R?" As the echoing word escaped the construct in a crackling burst that brought to mind a roaring wildfire more than anything else, visible excitement seemed to twist her features, arms the length of a bus each spreading outwards in… Huh, type seven, pattern nine. Hadn't seen that one in a while.

"W E L C O M E!" Feeling my hair ruffle out of place at the latest wave of unnaturally warm air, I exchanged a glance with Atoll, the possessed machine's blue optics meeting my own eyes for an instant before turning back to face the absurdly big hologram. In the face of the mech's refusal to speak, I took up the torch, levelling a flat stare up towards this latest bit of nonsense and allowing an unimpressed tone to colour my voice.

"Enough of this theatre, I saw your actual body before you conjured up this lightshow of yours. Present yourself immediately, Pearl." You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

The grandiose, almost euphoric expression that had coated the giant's face was replaced by an angered one in the same time that it would have taken someone to blink, smoldering bulk whipping forward until she was practically on her hands and knees, a singular eye almost as large as I was glaring at me with hatred in its swirling sclera.

"W H O A R E Y O U T O O R D E R M E?" Lips twisting down into a scowl, I lashed forward with a claw, ignoring the echo's halted attempt at jerking backwards as my hand sank wrist deep into the eye, a green glow engulfing the red and orange it was surrounded by as countermeasures were converted into offensive code.

"I am a Nacre, and you will present yourself at once." With a scream cut short, the behemoth of a specter popped like a balloon, a brief flurry of motes dispersing out into the air following the burst, leaving me standing with my arm outstretched and all three of my fellow Gems staring at me in bewilderment.

"... Did you just poke the giant scary fire giant to death?" Considering Patina's question for a moment, I slowly nodded, even as I lowered my arms and strained my ears, noting the distinctive pitter patter of dancing shoes rapidly slapping against the ground beneath them.

"Yes."

"Huh." My creation's nonplussed expression earned a brief snicker from Violet, who had decided to perch on her Batchmate's head for the time being, though anything else was interrupted by a slip of a figure darting out into the faint blue light emitted by some of Atoll's exposed thrusters. By all rights, she was just a Pearl. No more intimidating than I or any other of our caste generally appeared.

And yet it took far more effort than I would have liked not to take a step back at the manic intensity within the Gem's swirling eyes, the sheer threat every part of me was insisting her twitching hands displayed, with the limbs briefly looking like they were going to reach for my face, only to pull back at the last second. The closest thing I had to instincts insisted that there was something wrong with the thing in front of me.

That trying to go for a simple stab and bubble would see me and everyone I loved dead, despite the fact that I had only locked eyes with her for a few seconds. I shoved that sensation down as best I could, the familiar sensation of a mask plastering itself across my face proving a cold comfort in the presence of the Pearl's heat.

"A Nacre! A Nacre! You didn't say you were a Nacre! You didn't say anything!" My head reared back slightly as flickering flames danced across the stranger's lightform, strange patterns that felt almost reminiscent of tattoos etched across every inch of what would have been her skin, had she not been made of light and fire.

"But you danced! You danced with me and you didn't break and ooohhhhh this is so good yes this is good good good!" The occasional pulse would travel along them, like a brief flash of burning light, and tracking where they originated from led to the tattoos coiling together, tighter and tighter, until they settled into an almost circular mass that surrounded her right shoulder.

"You'll teach me, yes. That's what a Nacre is for, teaching Pearls. The Atoll's one disappeared, stupid thing, stupid place, always trying to keep me out, but it wasn't worth the effort anyway! But YOU! Oh yes you'll surely be great!" If one squinted, the sight that met my eyes might have borne some vague similarity to what I had done with the Baroques, albeit in a far less refined, stable manner. There was a gemstone there, embedded in that mess, but a significant amount of it had been…

melted, structure distorting until part of it crept outwards in a vaguely comet tail shaped extrusion, one flattened beneath the weight of the jagged, almost cancerous looking red prism that grew out of it, shimmering with a violent, chaotic energy.

My mind likened it to a rather barbaric looking pauldron, right before hands that sizzled against my lightform pressed against my chest, their owner staring up into my eyes with a grin so wide that it surely would have damaged an organic's mouth, swirling irises glowing.

"Come, come! I've never had proper visitors! Come come come come come-!" In a flash, one of those burning hands had grabbed a hold of my wrist, the Pearl trying to tug me along behind her, only to flinch and then stomp a foot when I didn't move. Her expression once more bore a seething anger as she twisted back about, mouth opening to yell something, only for the little thing to freeze as my hand landed on her shoulder.

"I can walk by myself. Lead the way." The last command seemed to excite her enough for the brief bout of instability to fade, and soon enough the crimson Gem was all but skipping off into the dark, occasionally waving a hand while urging me to keep up. It was as I took my first step forward that Atoll finally broke her brief impression of a statue, leaning down until her mask of a face was less than an inch from my own.

"We came here for battle, yet you let the Burning prattle. Do not let her actions deceive, this peace is only a brief reprieve." Staring at the unrelenting optics of someone whose memories I had witnessed personally, I nodded.

"Just give me some time. A few more bits of contact like that, and I'll have a way to neutralise her, safely." Just another unexpected benefit brought about by White's code. With every instance of physical touch, whatever borderline viral effect that seemed to emit from the Pearl's hands was taken in, dissected, and countered. And with how touchy and blatantly unstable she was…

I didn't doubt for a second that Atoll would get the fight she was hankering for soon enough, though hopefully not before I had found a way to chain down a being powered by something that felt more potent than a stars damned nuclear reactor.

"Are you coming?! Hurry! Hurry hurry hurry hurry!" …Hopefully it didn't take too many more touches, though. Indulging this psychopath was already getting pretty tiring.