Beau stood and watched the events unfold before him.

He felt himself detach as the organ grew inside the tank like he was a spectator on the set of some horror movie.

Unable to influence anything, he could scream and shout but they couldn’t understand him, you can’t reason with something that cant understand you.

He’d been there one too many times in his life.

He stood by as aliens conducted surgery.

Ryo, even after all they had been through together should have hated the aliens more than himself, yet here he was letting them do god knows what to his brain again.

It was the same as the other lab.

Rows and rows of vats and tanks holding all manner of monstrosities yet treated as mundane.

Beau stood outside them all, deaf to the subtleties of conversation.

Why would all of this suddenly be okay? He cracked his knuckles, holding clenched fists as he watched, Life held no sanctity in these halls, how could it when they could manipulate it so easily? If this was a way of life, what was abhorrent to them? What was the line they wouldn't cross?

The old adage of keeping your friends close but your enemies closer was beginning to ring true in his head.

Ryo and Jasmine both, no matter how many times he would ask a question he wouldn’t be getting a straight answer from either of them, he couldn't interpret how the aliens answered to him. Second-hand information got people killed, he couldn’t be in the dark anymore.

But fuck getting an alien squid in his brain.

If these monsters could build a spaceship, they could figure out an external translator.

“Hey,” Jasmine’s hand waved in front of his face, looking up at him through concerned eyes, “You okay Beau?”

He smiled.

“Just lost in thought is all…” He replied, then noticing the scene around him, perhaps he had gotten a little too lost in thought. He unclenched his hands, and then centred his attention on Ryo, “did the surgery go alright?”

Jasmine nodded her head,

“Well, there was a little bit of a hiccup, but were all done now,”

Beau walked up to Ryo, who sat at the end of the steel table with a blank look on his face.

For all their time together, he’d never seen Ryo not focused to the point of irritation, the teenage scowl was nowhere to be found.

It unnerved him.

“Hey, Ryo…” Beau approached him, studying his movements, “how you doing kid?”

Ryo blinked back into consciousness and gave Beau a slow thumbs up.

“Good,” came the relieved sigh, and a tap on the side of his head, “all quiet now, no shadow,”

Beau tried to smile back, and he prayed that it was just the language barrier.

“You still you?” Beau asked a little quieter.

Ryo gave Beau his smug smirk (shit-stirring smirk?).

“Homerun,” the kid replied.

Beau shook his head with relief and patted his shoulder.

He pushed the horrible thoughts back down but reaffirmed his decision.

He was going to get a translator from them one way or another.

Viitoic still struggled against the Captain, even after the mysterious infestation had vanished as quickly as it had materialised.

Jasmine’s voice commanded his attention.

“Its over,” She said firmly yet sincere, “they can’t hurt you,”

The engine lord blinked all six of his black eyes bewildered and enraged.

“Its over?!” he shrieked indignantly, “how can it be over when its only just begun??! Phenomenons do not just vanish once enacted! My senses were invaded and violated!-”

“That’s enough,” she silenced him, a blue-eyed stare waiting for him to hold his tongue, and when he did not dare interrupt her, she explained, “it is an unfortunate condition, but it will not interfere with my companion or your people any longer,”

“A condition…” Viitoic growled, “you knew of this disturbing errant?”

“I knew of it,” Jasmine cut him off, “It is a human condition suffered alone in the silence of our own skulls, it was the translator that brought it forth out into the open, and without proper care, the translator exacerbated its effects. Thankfully, it is under control now, so there is no need to fret or wail, if proper care had been taken when installing the organ,” she shot Viitoic a dirty glare, “then none of this disturbance would have transpired,”

Viitoic snorted, Rynard squeezed the engine lord for good measure.

“You are learning quickly namegiver…” Viitoic admitted, “but it was not I who conducted such foolishness.”

“Maybe not, but I expected an engine lord to hold himself to better conduct,” she looked to either side of her, “neither my Captain nor Dr Xant are acting as shrill as you did, if it were you conducting the surgery I doubt my companion’s condition would be as stable,”

That caught Viitoic off guard, and genuine shock smacked in his face

The citizen model did endure the phenomenon without panicking, the citizen should have been stiffed. The amount of Freq being thrown around the room and was ghastly, too many different types caused ugly cross-contamination.

He rattled his teeth in thought.

“Obviously it is an occurrence that will need to be further studied…” Viiotic muttered weakly, “especially its effects on more, intellectual models.”

“Perhaps,” Jasmine answered curtly, “but only after negotiations with the council,”

Viitoic hissed but conceded the point.

“After negotiations,” he repeated, making a mental note of his growing list of experiments.

“We have other requirements,” Jasmine continued, “Lieutenant Nako said you would be able to provide us with power armour-”

“Tsk!” Viitoic snapped, “next thing I’ll know he would have told you a warship was available,”

“Not yet,” Jasmine quipped, “I believe Ryo was the one he was negotiating with,” she threw a thumb over her shoulder at the recently surgically enhanced human, the young man looked up over at Viitoic and he felt his skin crawl.

The engine lord snapped his teeth,

“I suppose some armour is not a steep (courting) gift…” he muttered under his breath, “shall I bring up the lieutenants request?”

“Please do,” She replied,

Jasmine turned to Beau, returning to her far more casual way of speaking.

“He says he’ll work on our armour now, mines first then we can ask him to make up something for you and Ryo,”

Beau shook his head,

“Didn’t sound much like you were asking,” he observed, Jasmine scratched the back of her head.

“Yeah, well, the Engine Lord’s a bit of an asshole,” she replied, “I don’t think it’s personal though, you just have to act like you own the joint,”

“(in charge vibes) I get it,” Beau answered, “so where’s the armoury?”

Jasmine shook her head.

“It’s here,”

“Here? But I thought this was the lab?”

“It’s both,” she replied, the engine lord had been fiddling away at the machine, before another image appeared within the holoscreen, a suit of power armour that looked extremely familiar to the old soldier.

“I’ve seen that look before,” he stated with a disapproving tone.

“Oh? Really?”

“Yeah, bastard stabbed me,”

“Ugh,” Jasmine commiserated, “if it helps,” she looked down at her waist, “I don’t think i could wear it and still breath. Engine lord, could i make some changes?”

The monster snarled and clicked, its language full of hisses and long, drawn-out vowels, but the woman understood him perfectly.

“I have a reference,” she replied and turned back to beau, “The game case?”

He slowly handed it over, a small part of him excited at the prospect of real, power armour. There had to be a positive side to this whole alien abduction thing, somewhere down the line.

Jasmine passed the graphic over to the alien, who was confused by its presence.

“No, the data is on the disk but it’s a ‘game’, not a direct specs file,”

The engine lord let out a defeated hiss.

“I know, I know, but, you can make it look a little bit similar, right? You’re an engine lord?”

The beast snorted, as though incensed by the challenge and began manipulating the image in light space.

Soon, the armour began to take on a more human-like image, with jasmine directing the last few flourishes, making it sleeker than the original design.

“Yeah,” she announced at the end, hands-on-hips proud, “I’m happy with that,”

What followed was, to Beau’s complete surprise, an almost exact repetition of the translator organ growth, except this time, it was an entire suit of power armour.

Well, not quite.

It wasn’t the complete suit, rather, the organic inlay, a flayed skin to be cased in steel.

“So, it really is honest to god organic tech…”

“Yeah,” Jasmine replied, it’s pretty creepy overall,”

“Them spikes look nasty…”

Jasmine peered in for a closer look, the silent, smaller alien that followed jasmine everywhere make a minute growl, and its ears flickered.

“Xant says its to connect to our own nervous system, in order for it to function,”

Beau raised an eyebrow.

“So, it will be directly, connected, to us?”

“Yeah,” Jasmine gulped, Dr Xant moved to get beaus attention, showing him the puncture points in the alien’s orca like skin.

“So, the suits of armour are made from the same materials as the translator?”

“I guess so?” Jasmine responded.

“And the suits are connected to your nerves to work, right?”

“Yes,” jasmine started to see his train of thought.

“What’s to stop them from putting a translator into the suit itself?” he looked back at her.

“That way I can communicate with you all without having to have a squid in my brain,”

“Beau you’re fucking brilliant!” Jasmine exclaimed.

She immediately turned to the engine lord and full-on demanded a translator be put into the next suit.

The monster growled in protest but jasmine was not having it, a mixture of excitement and daring.

“I don’t want to hear it!” she snapped back, “it wouldn’t be hard at all!” she turned back to beau asking quickly “you want any changes to the suit?”

“As is on the cover, plus the translator, made it fit”

“Right got it!”

Beau watched as yet another eldritch horror was created inside a vat, a goopy mess of blue tissue and veins. He couldn’t see how such a thing could be made into armour, and he was having second thoughts about wearing it.

Three sets of Mjolnir armour stood before the humans, unrecognisable from the organic forms, steel alloy coated the outside and plush, black leather-lined the inside.

If he was being honest the 18-year-old inside him was hollering loudly for him to try it on.

He was wary of this spikes though.

“I don’t see ‘em,” he noticed, running his thumb down the inlay.

“Xant says they activate when you step inside, the button is on the collar,”

Jasmine looked between her counterparts.

“Who wants to try it on first?”

There was a great pause between the three of them, the very human response to let others go first even when they all really wanted to wear armour.

“I mean, I’ve worn citizen armour,” Jasmine elaborated “so I kinda already know how it feels,

“I just had surgery,” Ryo said blankly “I should wait,”

Beau bit the side of his lip,

“Alright, alright, I’ll go first, let you know it’s safe,” he chuckled, but not entirely sure what to expect.

Jasmine relayed the procedure step by step for him.

Slide into the suit

Touch the button with your chin

Brace for the needles.

“It’s okay,” he muttered hyping himself up, “it will be just a shot, like at the doc’s ain’t nothing to worry about…”

The leather was cold, and the suit itself fit him so tightly there was barely any room to move.

‘Just tap your chin and hold on’ he thought to himself, closing his eyes and tapping the colour with his chin.

He was expecting the needles.

He wasn’t expecting where.

The first two shot up into his heels and he shrieked.

“What in the tapdancing christ?!-” he screamed in anger, “what kind of psychopath stick’s them in the goddamn feet?!-” the rest of his rant was cut off by the suit continuing process.

The back of the knees,

The tail bone,

All up the spine

in the soft centre of his elbows and the palms of his hands.

The pain overshadowed by the fury, he had been tricked, swindled, and by gods righteous fury he was going to rip the engine lord in two when this was all said and done.

He shuddered in shock and the suddenly, sweet, sweet relief flowed through his entire body.

The cold leather became warm and the suit moulded to him.

It was light, strong, he could feel the shifting of the air through the steel and the tips of his fingers.

The pain was gone and in its place power.

He flexed his fingers, slowly, he became aware of another sensation, a bright, warm light.

‘He’s starting to feel it,’ Ryo’s voice echoed in his head and down his spine.

“Feel what?” Beau asked out loud and Jasmine smiled widely, the light became stronger.

“We call it ‘Frequency’, or Freq for short,” a deep soothing voice spoke to him, and suddenly beau felt as though he were standing in a great river, “I must admire your tenacity, an external translator within military regalia, I dare say a brilliant if an unorthodox solution to the human problem,”

Beau blinked, staring at Dr Xant, then at Jasmine.

“oh,” he breathed “I get it now…”

“Deep breaths Sargent beau,” Xant instructed, “your own physiology will with reacting to the translator, you will need to adjust,”

Beau looked at his fingers once more, folding them in and out of his palm as his own aura emerged. It was a deep amber glow, a thick mist of memories, tough leather, dull steel, patience, Spades fur and cool ale. It was as though there was a weight he carried, that hung on his every step, but it was not unwelcome.

“Huh,” Beau uttered, “yall forgiven,” he replied, “this thing come with a helmet?”

“A set of regalia would not be complete without,” the snide arrogant permeated from the engine lord, “I await your acknowledgements,” he chuckled.

“I’ll give it to ya,” Beau nodded, “you may be one ugly motherfucker, but this is tight,”

Viitoic clicked his tongue, confused for the moment, but understood the sentiment.

“Well then Namegiver, do you require my assistance further? Or may I return to the overwhelmingly important duties you have pulled me from?”

“You have been sardonically cooperative engine lord, but we have everything we require, so we shall take our leave,”

Rynard picked up the remaining two suits, while Jasmine waved at the engine lord.

“Thank you! Live long and prosper!” she laughed teasingly.

Viitoic couldn’t help but bob his head in return,

“May the universe give you what you deserve,” he chuckled back.

As the humans vacated with their escorts from Viitoics labs he once again held dominion. His engineers began coming out of their hiding places, many still jittering from the errant visions.

They stood and waited for their engine lords orders.

The large-headed chimera tapped his tooth plate together.

“Pull me a ship’s brain from any of the veteran fighter ships,” he purred to himself, “I want to see how much Industrial freq we can produce before the signals become unstable…”