#marka

[vintagewildlife]

Scaly-tailed lizard By: Marka From: The Desert 1977

[littleplantfreak]

“Hup! Okay, I definitely have you. Make sure to keep still. These heels may be both functional in a fight and very cute, though I’m beginning to wonder if they have a weight limit!” Mari says, voice high from the delight of being able to manage this. 

“…You have a lot of faith in your shoemaker,” Varka puffs out a laugh.

“Perhaps I do. I was right though. I swore I’d be able to carry the whole world, and since you walk around like you’re carrying the weight of it on your shoulders, I have both the whole world and my whole world in my arms,” Mari explains, her tail swaying back and forth, balancing the extra weight through sheer force of will… and maybe  also her geo vision strategically placed on the soles of her heels.  

“You’ve been spending too much time with Barbatos if you’re giving out declarations like that. Since when are you the charming one? What happened to the little cat that would blurt out whatever she’s thinking, even when it comes out all messed up?” Varka asks, his hands on her shoulders squeezing lightly. If she wasn’t so warm, he’d almost forget she’s supporting all his weight, but every connection of her body to his makes his heart race, from where his hands grip to his thighs on her hips, to her own grip on his lower back. 

“I still put my foot in my mouth too often, but thanks to my prolonged contact with you, Mr. Silvertongue, I’ve decided to let some of your charm rub off on me. Alice has been lamenting to me lately though. She says the ‘cute’ Fontanian accent I used to have is being whittled away from all my time traveling, and somehow also blames you for changing some of my vocabulary.”

 It’s not entirely true. Varka’s pretty sure her accent comes out very clearly when she’s seething mad or when she’s just woken up m, but thinking about the latter is far more tempting than the former, especially when he remembers how clingy she is in bed. 

Mari’s hand placement shifts, making sure he’s able to keep a tight hold around her hips. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he’s definitely enjoying this, she thinks before continuing.  “I can handle the motherly harping though, considering how often she sends my letters to you faster than even my courier service can move them.” It’s hard to turn off the thought that as good as her business is, it’ll never beat a witch’s magic. 

Varka shakes his head, the summer breeze curling through his hair as it rustles blue and white blooms nearer to the ground than he is, their petals lifting and riding loosely on the wind that feels almost like home. “You could always deliver the letters yourself.” He says this even while knowing she hates mixing business with pleasure, but hoping anyways that she’d make an exception. He doesn’t realize that if you’d asked her, he’s often her only exception for many things, whether it’s making extra and completely unnecessary trips to Mondstadt or slipping him fatui intel she’s gleaned from their use of her couriers. 

“Actually…I was thinking of taking a step back from field work for a while. I’ve got so many new clients that I think a break is in order to get all my ducks in a row, at least when it comes to the financial aspect,” Mari muses, though Varka can tell from the pitch of her voice spiking just a little higher that she’s beating around the bush about something else. 

“Would you mind sharing your address with me? It makes it easier to get correspondence if I have an actual place to receive it, and you know how I hate to put Diluc out when I visit,” she says, forcing her eyes to go anywhere but him, which is difficult given that he’s very much in her personal bubble.

Varka takes a second to process it before he barks a laugh out, much too entertained by how she worded that question. “That is maybe the cutest way you could’ve asked to move in with me, save for showing up at my door with a suitcase.”

“It’s not moving in! I’ll be…renting off you. My monthly payment may be meals and helping with your paperwork, but that’s still payment,” she insists, though this was an inevitable embarrassment she’d planned for, because being vulnerable almost always comes with this small price. 

It’s not quite commitment in the normal sense, but it's her attempt at it, and they’ve known each other far too long now to bother with the push and pull of trying to force what others would deem as ‘settling down.’ “If you want, I could manage 5,000 mora a month! 10,000? How much is rent nowadays? I usually just camp-“ Mari starts again, now backpedalling on her earlier courage. 

Before Varka can get a single teasing word out, the sound of a heel snapping and two bodies rolling down a flowering hill somewhere in Fontaine rings clear through the wind. 

Credit to my wonderful artist Mika-Sanbu on vgen and credit to my two dividers for this <3

[guy60660]

© Touring Club Italiano | Marka | Financial Times

[bioniclechicken]

April approacheth so I drew some girls

Forgive me

Hahli-chan

Maku

Tamaru

Gavra

Gavra (reboot)

Vhisola

Dalu

Kai

Marka

Nokama-sensei

Idris

Bahrag Princesses

[legendarytragedynacho]

Francoise Hardy in 1966

📷 Marka/Universal Images Group/Getty Images via Vogue Spain

[mebeth]

The Ga-Matoran of Mata Nui ('01-'03)

Kotu

Diminished & Rebuilt

Amaya

Diminished & Rebuilt

Kai

Diminished & Rebuilt

Kailani

Rebuilt

Marka

Diminished & Rebuilt

Nireta

Rebuilt

Nixie

Diminished & Rebuilt

Okoth

Rebuilt

Pelagia

Rebuilt

Shasa

Diminished & Rebuilt

[voguefashion]

L’Uomo Vogue 70s & 80s Covers

Helmut Berger by Oliviero Toscani (October/November 1973)

Paul Newman by Marka (June/July 1975)

Jack Nicholson by Klaus Lukas (August 1975)

Ryan O’Neal by Oliviero Toscani (August 1977)

Rudolf Nureyev by Oliviero Toscani (December 1979)

Rupert Everett by John Bishop (September 1984)

Jeremy Irons by Tony McGee (January 1982)

Hugh Grant by Lord Snowdon (December 1987)

Gary Oldman by Lord Snowdon (February 1988)

Daniel Day-Lewis by Herb Ritts (May 1988)

[randomwriteronline]

Bioshippingweek time

because i get antsy about my post count im putting all my entries together! all stories, four with added drawings. went for mostly unusual/rare pairs, all sapphic minus the first one (which is ???/???).

thank you @superbova1995 for dalu x gaaki i owe u. one kiss. sorry its toa instead of rahaga, alas big lady got me

12: Beginnings - Firsts - Starts

The Prototype came online to something bright in the distance. It shimmered and shined and glittered and gleamed, small and gorgeous, staring or glaring (it was hard to tell) right at the little artificial creature.

The Prototype, thoroughly overwhelmed with something it could not recognize, waved at that splendid vision.

Its God waved back.

It approached the little body until Its own was a hundred, a thousand times larger, and cupped it gently in Its hands of light. They felt warm, soft, cozy; the Prototype snuggled into them as they closed around it with a tender sweetness, looking up at the enormous eyes illuminating it like suns too close to the ground, soaking in the bright element as it was bathed in its splendid glow, taking to it as naturally as though it were everything it had ever known.

Its God watched it with a kind amusement, a sort of elated curiosity: something in Its vague, faint features softened immensely as Its fingers caressed the little head in their grasp.

The Prototype gazed back. A wonderful sensation swelled inside it.

"Is this ____?" they asked, awestruck.

The word felt alien in their mouth, the sound of it being processed by their brain as something garbled and incomprehensible.

Their God leaned down, smiling gently, closer and closer, until Its colossal face was pressed against their own - their lights mingling together, knowledge too vast entering the little body through a zap of electricity, a lack of air, blooming the meaning of that strange word into their synapses: their body shuddered and recoiled as it attempted to reject the flow of information like a deadly poison, but the Matoran leaned further into the formless kiss, knowing that yes, yes, yes, this was ____, this was ____, and they were allowed to ____ even if only for this moment.

Their ____ broke contact gently, taking with it the noun holding within it the meaning of an otherwordly emotion. It said nothing; only smiled sweetly, kindly, perhaps a little sadly, cradling them closer for a second more, holding onto a beginning cut in half.

Then it let them go, let them drift into the brief unconsciousness that preluded a life of work for the both of them, and Takua forgot it all.

-

13: Fire - Warmth - Glow

It was at least one hour after sundown.

A sailor knows better than to leave the harbor in the middle of the night to go off on some adventure or other; but Marka remained close to the shore, following a well-known path, moved by a clear purpose, and thus could be certain that she was plenty safe.

Still, being out at this hour did not soothe her mind. The water was dark and opaque as it kept rolling endlessly beneath her, like a vast expanse of oil that murmured in a gravely voice; who knew what slimy servants of Makuta slithered under the waves, nudging her vessel to capsize it and devour her...

She shook her head: her Hau held steadfast onto her skull. No beast would catch her tonight.

Her arrival to the beaches of Ta-Wahi was met by the stern gaze of Mata Nui's lone effigy as the wind curled around it, carrying a low chant along the grey rock ever so softly. She turned to the cliff, trying to see its top; only a vague glint met her eyes. Lightstone in hand, she took careful steps along the steep stairs.

The sky was clear, blacker than a brand new Onu-Koran mine. A miriad of stars dotted its velvet expanse.

And there, before a silver contraption staring out into that yawning abyss with its single emerald eye in the shape of a prism, still gazing through it, she stood.

"Nixie," the shipwright called.

The Ga-Matoran turned with a startle. She blinked, almost confused, trying to acclimate first to the faint light and then to the darkness surrounding her; she turned her head left and right, up and down, as if to regain her sense of direction after a hard fall.

"Oh," she said finally, meeting Marka's eyes: "It's late."

"Y'oughta been back an hour ago." the other noted. It did not sound that much like a reprimand.

The astrologer simply nodded: "Then let's go."

They did not bother talking on the way back to the boat.

Nor during their return voyage.

Nixie broke the silence only once, pointing high above their heads, to the vast sky: "There she is," she said.

Her peer followed her finger.

The Red Star and her crimson trail journeyed on with them.

"We're going in opposite directions," the astrologer commented, completely taken with the brilliant, foreboding dot. Her gaze was magnetized to it. "Wonder what she's chasing after."

Marka stared at her pale Pakari, of the hue of clear skies that assure safe sailing, unable to tear her eyes from her: "Who knows."

The creatures beneath the waves dotted with minuscule diamonds followed them lazily, too tired to try and hunt them down, repelled by the faint lights the cosmos so gently lent to their watery mirror; and so they came back to the lily pads unscathed, and bid each other goodnight, and despite the small emptiness of their individual huts they did not feel cold.

-

14: Arguments - Amends - Ideas

"You looked better as a Hordika."

Nokama stiffened in her hold almost instantly. Krahka turned to the door of the hut, senses straining to locate whatever might have put the other on edge; she tightened her hold on the Turaga as she squirmed antsily and went to cover her under her much larger body so that she would be better protected against incoming threats.

Sharp elbows jabbed her left and right: "Off - off!" Nokama whimpered as she slid out of her lover's grasp. "Quit that! You're suffocating me!"

"I'm keeping you safe," the shapeshifter argued. Her brain annoyingly reminded her that Matoran-adjacent beings were completely illiterate when it came to reading bodies, including their own, and so she huffed loudly and explained: "You're tense and scared. Clearly, you can feel something is trying to get you, and clearly, I was being a good partner and keeping you out of sight."

The Turaga shook her head so vehemently that her mask almost flew off: "That's not it! The problem is not outside, it's right here," she replied just as angrily. Her hands played with each other for a moment, unsure what to do with themselves until she finally snapped: "Never say that again."

Krahka blinked: "Say what again?"

"You know exactly what it was."

"Don't start these fake conversations of yours," the shapeshifter groaned: "If I tell you I don't know, it means that I don't know."

"About me," Nokama insisted, "As a Hordika."

She watched her lover shift and deflate into a flatter form with a bored huff, pawing lazily at the ground: "What's so terrible about that? It was a compliment. I don't see anything wrong with it."

"Of course you don't." the Turaga murmured bitterly as her back hunched by reflex. She was closed in on herself, clutching her arms tight, light shivers curling around her armor. "You don't have to worry about Purity."

"Don't accuse me like that! I keep myself clean!"

"The problem is not outside!" Nokama snarled again.

Krahka tensed.

Her eyes followed the much smaller being as she thrashed against an invisible assailant, observing the way she clenched into her own entrails as if to roll herself into a ball, as if to disappear - and in the meantime she raved deliriously and paced like a hound going mad searching its prey, breaths shallow and heavy, on the verge of breaking down: "I was wrong! I was everything I wasn't supposed to be! That body wasn't mine, it was - it was eating me alive, crushing my mind into a pulp, molding it in its disgusting, distorted image! And I was stuck in it with no way out, bending under it, barely realizing I was losing myself in it, I was losing - losing..."

She could still feel it, the strange weight of her chest, the ligaments in her limbs burning as they forced her into a hunched, bow-legged stance and wailed when she tried to break out of it, the agony of her hands melting into weapons.

Nokama whined in a shrill voice, unable to see anything beyond the agony of the transformations' phantom pains.

"I'm losing his favor," she sobbed, hands desperately fighting a losing battle against their aches to tear her body apart in a misguided attempt at cleansing her, at soothing her, "I'm losing the right, the right to live in the suns - under the gaze of the Great Spirit, in his favor - I'm supposed to be chosen!... I'm supposed to be pure and chosen!... I'm supposed to be chosen... To be pure... Pure..."

"Nokama," Rahaga Gaaki called out to her.

It couldn't have been her, not anymore; even in her overwhelming and overwhelmed confusion, the Turaga's brain still remembered that the mutation had been lifted from her mentor, that she was once again a Toa, with a voice as clear as a mountain spring. This voice was rough, and hissing, and creaky, so it could not be her.

But she still leaned into it, into the body catching her as she fell back, because she needed her.

She needed someone near her.

The heaviness and gentle breathing of something that was completely external from herself lulled her slowly, uncoiling her from the spiral that had ensnared her until she was no longer trying to dent her own armor, until the pain was exorcised out of her.

Nokama inhaled deeply, and exhaled. She opened her eyes: Krahka watched her carefully, large head settled on the small lap. Her lover wrapped it in a hug. The shapeshifter let her.

"So it's the changing," she tried eventually, unsure whether or not she had understood even a minimal fraction of that turmoil.

The Turaga nodded a little: "It's part of it."

"So it's something about me, too?"

"No, not at all... Transformation is in your nature. It's nothing you have to worry about."

"It's in yours too."

Now Nokama shook her head.

"Yes it is," Krahka insisted: "Matoran, Toa, Turaga - you change shapes just the same as I do, just in a more constricted way. Isn't it all the same? Why is it worse if you turn into something else?"

The grip around her head tightened ever so slightly: she could feel that prey-like tension coursing through the small motion, uneasiness slipping into her own body via osmosis. She was quick to nuzzle the Noble Rau, offering the comforting promise that she understood - though at this point, she was unsure if she ever truly would - and thought of what else she could have said.

At last she cleared her throat: "But if you think this Great Spirit of yours could be so mad over something you overcame anyways," she said, pulling her head out of the beloved grip and holding it up arrogantly, "You can always make me your new deity."

To her relief, Nokama snorted.

"I feel like you'd be even more demanding," she joked weakly, scratching her lover's chin.

"And would that be so bad?" Krahka cooed as she leaned in her hand.

"A little tiring."

"Like you aren't used to this sort of work."

"Yes, but you should be my refuge from it."

The shapeshifter rolled her whole body onto her lap, almost knocking her down: "Tough luck, I guess!"

Nokama's ugly, earnest laugh soothed the last of her worries.

-

15: Change - Growth - New

Vhisola is a creature of habit.

She imagines she used to be before the amnesia as well, though most of what she knows from back then is that she was very intense (because obsessed sounds too nasty, even if it was effectively what she was) about Nokama.

This was not necessarily new information, as she's fairly sure the entirety of Ga-Koro heard her screaming and sobbing in her hut when Kotu and Macku were chosen to be the Turaga's aides instead of her, even though she was better than both of them, but nobody is going to mention it because it was very embarrassing.

Anyways! Vhisola is a creature of habit.

That said.

The Av-Matoran having females is something pretty new, but she isn't so against that notion.

And they have mutated Matoran too, who sort of look like bats, but she isn't against that either.

And since it's going to be a while before they can make an Av-Koro of their own, now in New Ga-Koro there's a very angry, very aggressive mutated Av-Matoran female with knives for hands and big sharp teeth who hates everybody.

Which Vhisola is also not against.

At all.

Maybe one of these days she's going to actually approach her. Until then, she's going to stare at her from a safe distance and grip her hands into fists as hard as she can while she does that.

Which is a normal, well-adjusted way of conveying her feelings.

Gavla had not wanted to be changed back. Period.

She would have loved to remain Vamprah's eyes and associate for the rest of eternity, fitting in the darkness so naturally, gliding around on her wings - ok, a good chunk of the appeal was also the lack of remorse and heavily dimmed conscience, but also Shadow just felt better to her than Light ever had. She can't explain it further.

Not that she wants to, with all these pitying looks she gets. The only good thing of this whole ordeal is that the mutation wasn't reverted, but now everybody is oh so sad for her.

Oooh, look at her, she's a bat now, how cruel! She must hate it!

Have these people ever even seen bats?

They're cooler than Karzhani.

This is the ideal Matoran body. You may not like it, but it's the truth.

So yes, she doesn't like to be gawked at.

With. Maybe, one exception.

She has no idea who that Ga-Matoran is or what she wants, but when Gavla flicks her wings, or shows her teeth when snarling, or climbs up walls with her claws, she can see her almost snapping in half for how hard she tenses like she's watching the most gorgeous creature in the universe.

And Gavla isn't really sure how this persistent staring makes her feel, but it's kind of... Nice.

That at least someone recognizes how awesome her current form is.

Maybe one of these days she's going to pin her against a wall with her whole body to figure out what her deal is - just in case her constant watching was for mocking instead of admiring.

Which is a normal, well-adjusted way of asking people things.

-

16: Successes - Victories - Competition

Chiara's silhouette appeared in the doorframe with a crash booming thunder: "WHERE IS SHE?"

A few Agori scattered in her wake like marbles escaping from a broken satchel, most of them dragging themselves away on their hands as their prosthetic legs were still being inspected. A loud curse came from the annexed room in which said inspection was happening, accompanied by a lot of metallic tumbling.

Gelu turned to her less than enthused: "Hello."

"I SAW HER COME IN HERE," the Toa completely ignored him.

"Who?"

At that, her eyes flattened into vitriolic slits: "My nemesis," she hissed.

The Glatorian wasn't entirely convinced this was something to take seriously, on account of the word having come out of her mouth with the same tone in which he used to refer to a boy who would pull his tail for fun when he was so small that his cousin could wrap his entire hand around his head and swing him like a nunchuck.

"I thought I heard someone whimpering my name," a voice that notably wasn't his decided it would have been an acceptable thing to say out loud in a public space.

Chiara immediately forgot the rest of the room even existed: she zeroed in on the equally mechanical being leaning heavily on the wall with her only arm as she replied to her furious glare with a mocking, challenging look in her eyes.

In a matter of seconds the Vo-Toa was on her, pinning her against that wall with one hand dangerously close to her neck; the other let her without even flinching, not worried at all - almost amused, as though knowing the electric warrior wouldn't have dared landing anything other than hollow threats upon her in such a small space with so many other people.

"Been a while, Chiara," she cooed.

"What do you think you're doing here, huh?" the other growled. Small sparks crackled dangerously from her frame. "That keen to show your beaten mug around?"

Lariska chuckled: "Say that all you want, but if I remember right it's been fifteen matches and we're still tied."

"Oh, don't worry, I'll make sure to fry you properly this time!"

"Right here? Right now? While my arm is being repaired? And here I believed you Toa were all about honor in battle."

"You talk as if that would be worth anything to a Dark Hunter."

"No, it wouldn't - but it makes it more fun."

"You-!!"

A knife fluttered horrendously close to Chiara's neck. Lariska stopped it mere millimeters before it could do any damage; she tilted the blade upward, forcing the Toa to tilt her head with it.

"Always in a rush," she grinned. Static had her wrist seize briefly, but she had long learned how to fight against the other's nerve-wracking powers, and did not lose her grip. "You're lucky I could use some target practice with this hand."

"Maybe outside," Gelu said extremely loudly, just to make sure they heard him.

Unbothered by his very deliberate (and surprisingly successful, he was relieved to discover) attempt at shattering whatever they had going on, the Dark Hunter easily slipped away from where she was pinned with a silent laugh. The glance she flashed back at the Toa before disappearing outside the door held nothing but contempt and confrontation.

Chiara immediately gave chase.

She just as immediately almost maskplanted into the floor as Gelu smacked his footless leg in her middle, cutting off her breath.

"What?!" she snarled at him. "She's out there waiting for me to tear her a new armor!"

"You're not doing that," the Glatorian replied flatly. Her enraged pout made him suddenly understand what Strakk had to deal with on family gatherings. "Who exactly is that, by the way?"

"I told you! My nemesis. Lariska."

"Alright. What'd she do?"

"She's a Dark Hunter!" Chiara flailed her arms wildly as she conveyed her crimes: "A spy! An assassin! A criminal! A great fighter if she didn't work for the enemy! I've met her fifteen times and every single one I've come this close to beating her, but she just! Never! Yields!"

"Huh."

"She wriggles out of my grasp like a lava eel and does her stupid laugh and bounds away like she's lighter than air! And she mocks me from afar! And she does that just because she knows it drives me absolutely mad!"

"Hm."

"I just-!!" she let out a furious growl, clawing at her mask. "I need to crack her like a branch and sizzle her brains out!"

"Wouldn't it be easier," the poor man offered, "To just have sex and call it a day?"

Chiara interrupted her rage briefly to shoot him a puzzled look: "What's that?"

Ah.

Very slowly, Gelu reached up to rub at his eyes with his hands, feeling all of a sudden a great tiredness and despair overcome him.

Yeah. That explained it.

"Too scared to keep your word?" Lariska heckled from outside.

"YOU WISH," Chiara roared back, and the Glatorian just let her charge out of the room like a sand bat diving onto a prey to get herself beaten into the dirt for the sixteenth time.

-

17: Secrets - Surprises - Defenses

Dalu fidgeted in place, straightened her back, hunched it again, flapped her legs, squeezed her eyes, made a frustrated hum and finally gave up with a huff: "It's not working."

"I'm afraid there's not much meditating can do if you're so antsy," Gaaki replied.

"It's not my fault!" the Ga-Matoran complained. "This position makes my whole body hurt, the silence drives me insane, and to make up for it my thoughts become too loud to let me concentrate!"

"Then we should figure out something else..."

Dalu paled instantly, an almost fearful look behind her Rau's cover; she hastily waved the blades stuck to her arms in a pleading manner, begging: "Oh no no no, please - let me try again, I promise I will get it this time - maybe I just, need to sit in a different place--"

The Toa interrupted her by stretching out of her carefully folded pose, limbs snapping into much less graceful shapes as she relaxed - still used to stances that came easier to her former Rahaga body.

Once she was fully comfortable, she turned to the Ga-Matoran again: "You don't need to mold yourself into something that won't fit you," she told her simply from the half curled up wisdom of her weird lizard-like posture: "Meditation might just not come easy to you. There's no shame in such a little thing."

"But it should be easy! I need it to be easy!" her companion replied in a strangled voice: "I don't want to be this angry all the time! It exhausts me!"

"How can it help you if it just makes you angrier?"

"I don't know! I don't know why it must be like this! I just want it to work for once!"

A gentle hand ran up and down her shoulder as she heaved, in a soothing motion; she became conscious of her breathing, of the frustration clouding her vision, and slowly managed to reign herself back into a stable mood.

As if she couldn't make more of a fool of herself...

"Did anybody ever teach you?" Gaaki's voice was earnest, not mocking in the slightest.

Dalu shook her head.

"Oh! Well, that explains it." the Toa smiled. Before she even realized she was being moved, the Matoran found herself seated squarely in a broader lap, leaned back against a cool chest: "I can give you a couple tips. Are you more comfortable?"

The other peeped a flustered confirmation.

Gaaki laughed a little, in a hissing tone: "No need to be so stiff. Take a deep breath now, and exhale while you close your eyes."

Dalu followed her instructions. It was a little hard not to be tense - this was the closest she had been to a Toa in her whole life, let alone a Ga-Toa... Perhaps the connection to their mutual element was causing her brain to act up strangely. Was it a common thing? Did that mean she was meant to be a Toa, too?

The other's voice came to her audio receptor with the sweetness of a mumbling brook: "The trick," she said softly, as if sharing a secret, "Is to find a quiet noise in the silence. Something that doesn't demand much attention usually - the hint of a breeze, drops falling far away... Focus on it as hard as you can: let it fill your thoughts, and follow its path as it simply goes. The rest comes along with it."

There were plenty of sounds around them, now that the Ga-Matoran searched for them: waves crashing in the distance, grass rustling, branches bending, leaves crackling, the works, really. But her head laid right against Gaaki's chest, and from it, faintly, she could hear the mechanisms around her heartlight move with the gentle clicking and clacking of well-oiled clockwork; and from the moment she perceived it, everything else fell dead silent.

Follow its path... She imagined the gears turning, the small pistons making their rounds, the electricity crackling as it fed into her soul. She let that ensemble lift her, move her along the well threaded road of its slow dance like a graceful figure locked inside a music box.

It felt easy.

It felt peaceful.

She opened her eyes to find the Toa looking down at her with an amused expression.

Oh?

Oh!

"Did I fall asleep?" she asked embarrassedly.

Gaaki treated her to another hissing snicker: "Happens more often than you'd think," she reassured her. "And it means it finally worked! At least, I hope so. Do you feel any better?"

Still coddled in much larger arms, Dalu only replied: "... Yeah."

Another grin had her brain fry a circuit.

"Come to me any time you need," the Toa reassured her after they'd both gotten back on their feet, gently hushering her on her way with a sweet look in her eyes: "I'm always glad to help."

Dalu would have loved to give her some kind of proper answer; instead, head full of something and a strange sensation tingling pleasantly across her, she only mumbled something and walked off absentmindendly, simply keeping her new incomprehensible discoveries to herself.

-

18: Travel - Distances - Progress

"How far still?"

"Six hundred bio more."

"Alright, old girl," Johmak adjusted her grip on Helryx as an ominous creak arose from her own joints, "Hold on tight."

The Toa did not reply; they kept moving forward, slower than snails.

They did not speak for a long time. Not that they expected for one of them to break out into chit-chat - battered as they were, it was a miracle they still had enough breath to walk. Their pursuers were too close to waste time with words, anyways: that could wait until they were out of sight and out of mind - meaning once they were safe within the hideout, with enough time to lick their wounds and assess the situation.

The many nooks and crannies the Order carved for itself across the universe's islands weren't made to be found easily. Helryx knew their location by heart, but she did not fault Johmak for struggling to tell its entrance apart from the environment around it.

She nudged her in the right direction with a grunt; her underling repayed her by shoving her to safety first, if a little gracelessly.

Once the camouflaged door was shut behind them again, enveloping them in the relative darkness of the hideout, the Toa allowed herself to sink into the ground with a hiss.

"Not yet," Johmak reminded her, voice lacking aggression. She slipped her hands under Helryx's arms and dragged her, slowly, horrendously slowly, beyond tired herself, to some halphazardly stuffed cot.

Helryx did not move a single muscle. She watched her agent from where she laid motionless as she got hold of a stool and sat down beside her, sighing hard as she let herself fall in her seat: for roughly a minute, the only sound between them were their heavy breaths. She counted sixty-nine seconds; on seventy, punctual as usual, Johmak stretched, yanked a toolbox out from somewhere, pried a chunk of blue armor off of her superior, and got to work.

Her ability to fragment physically made her a skilled medic when it came to internal damage: she could weave through the more delicate bits of a being's anatomy without almost touching them.

Helryx let her operate on her old, worn mechanisms, eyes shut. She shivered lightly when something grazed a nerve; her agent mumbled a half apology of some kind, and when she returned on that spot she was lighter than air, gliding over it.

The treatement took hours, probably. The old Toa fell into a sleep-like trance at some point, and awoke feeling more exhausted than before.

Johmak leaned against her leg, head in her hand, eyes distant. Her fingers hovered distractedly above the still exposed innards of her boss, not soothing them, not damaging them - only feeling them lightly, with her digits, as they continued on in their endless dance despite the age and wear marking them.

Helryx met her blank gaze.

"Report."

"Relax," the other drawled softly. "No sign of life beside us."

The Toa sighed.

Her hand slipped under Johmak's leg, pulling it up on the cot. She removed the ebony plating to reveal straining muscles: at her command humidity condensed in soothing drops, her fingers spreading them all across the tense flesh with comforting motions.

The other female exhaled quietly in relief.

"We cannot do this anymore," Helryx murmured.

"Do what?"

"Missions together. Our priorities get too compromised."

Johmak hummed.

Her hand laid on her superior's.

"It's a long way to Daxia," she only commented. "I'll enjoy our final escapade while it lasts."

"Enjoy is quite the choice of word," the Toa huffed.

She got back a wry, sly smile: "Could be worse."

"How so?"

"I could be a Makuta."

Helryx hummed: "Quite a lot worse, indeed."

The distance their Duty already imposed was suffocating enough.