angel engine x

if you saw someone else tweet about this yeah i did see that. and i was like oh i'm a fraud i never actually finished this ship for sir berry. this won't make me any less of a general fraud but you know. instead of telling myself i can't touch it for three months or something i'm just gonna do it today. my two-year ao3 account anniversary btw i didn't reach a million words but i'm still cruisin. i didn't tag the big gay but fans will know

It shouldn't be tender. It isn't tender. It's more than a little violent, by its very definition.

It's what Egil needs to have done, however.

The Monado is a corrupting force, but by its corruption it still, cruelly, maintains that absolute loyalty to Zanza, to the Bionis. Machina will always be potentially vulnerable to it no matter how robust their Faces, no matter how firmly planted their feet. Further, a potential vulnerability is simply a vulnerability. No less. No more. By this token, Egil can only hope to assemble as many defensive measures as possible, in the toil to one day overcome the fearsome hold the Bionis has upon the people of the Mechonis.

And to do that, however unfortunately, he needs flesh and blood from a Homs. There are plenty of resources in that regard held securely and sterilely within the Central Factory (elsewhere, within the factory space, because such things are alternately distasteful to Egil on moral and aesthetic grounds - rather, not aesthetics, but whatever branch of linguistic symbology it is that makes your stomach, designed by a wise maker for only water and ether, wretch and twist and turn).

The Homs are dead. Trapped here on the Mechonis, their constituent ether will not return to the Bionis. To turn their flesh and blood into part of a weapon, in the sense that Faces are weapons, is perhaps less than ethical, but Egil's ultimate goal is, still, peace. Buried beneath it all, he dreams of resolution; any resolution that does not end in more and more Machina dead, and Mechon scrapped just as brutally.

Egil needs what he has taken from the Homs. More than the bare minimum, isn't it, to make repurpose? He also needs a Machina willing to undergo such a process. To be retrofitted into a Face - one that Minoth has requested be named Copperhead - that can withstand what Machina birthed as Meyneth had intended cannot.

Egil cannot make himself hope for peace. It has been too long for that. Most have already shrunk away from him, fearing what his determination will mean for the rest of their race. Minoth, too, has become apprehensive, but within him is an irreconcilable tether to the goodwill within Egil that refuses to be stamped. The atrocities have gone on for long enough. Minoth understands how a man's patience can wear, and wear, and wear.

"Have you heard, then?" he asks, fatigue in his voice as Minoth enters, the rhythm of his walk immediately achingly familiar. The writer and frequent volunteer with the Hidden Village's children has always had an earpiece for gossip, and for knowing what needs to be known before it is even presented.

Settling at the workbench next to Egil, Minoth replies, "I heard enough. Pieced together the rest."

Yet he doesn't look overwhelmingly apprehensive.

He's grown distant from Vanea, but still holds his connection to their family together the best that he can. Sometimes Miqol even makes him laugh with some ill-advised joke or other. It's hard to know when it's right to tell Egil of how guilty that makes him feel, and when to spare his friend the discomfort.

"I hope you trust me, Minoth."

Minoth's face, just then, carries the most forlorn look Egil has ever seen on a Machina, save for his sister and quite possibly Lady Meyneth herself.

He does trust. Absolutely. And that's the issue.

Even if he does harbor a concern...he does not feel he can tell. He would sublimate what it is he has as a "pure" Machina, in order that he might be able to see what comes beyond the helm of the mother Mechonis.

Must more Machina die fruitlessly? Would it not be better if one tried a new tactic, to forge a new path to the future?

"I know you're proud of Mechonis, Egil."

They all are. They all love Meyneth tirelessly, even when it feels that she has all but faded from their world.

"I do not wish to be so proud that I would not acknowledge what there is, in that other world..."

Minoth lays a careful hand on Egil's wrist. They're both lacking their headdresses, and it's one of the rare moments that Minoth feels bigger than the other man, since his hair is more unruly and lays claim to a greater number of bold orange streaks.

"Of course I'm not exactly enthusiastic. I won't tell you that you're doing the right thing."

It's not that the measures of right and wrong have become so distorted, but rather that the way to achieve normal balance is all but lost to them, the scattered Machina who grieve and relocate and innovate and compensate and regulate and always factor on.

"Yet you'll let me continue - no, you will continue, with me. We will continue together."

This may be wrong. This may be horrific. But Minoth is not so attached to his life, and not so unattached to Egil, that he wouldn't at least try.

"Together, of course. We're nothing any other way."

A brow raises. Nothing, you say? But of course it's true.

"You have my word. Our show will go on."

Egil bows his head to his wrist, letting each nodule on his face brush up bare against the back of Minoth's hand.

In Egil's every expression there is still so, so much life. It is a joy, to Minoth, to watch him work at whatever projects interest him. Once, those had been more constructive. But now...it doesn't bear thinking about.

Even as Minoth lies still beneath Egil's careful ministrations (he hasn't been fully knocked out quite yet), knowing what he has committed himself to, he tries to concentrate on conversations they've had in the past. Philosophy, like Egil had discussed with Arglas.

That is the union they hope to achieve now. The spirit of it, anyway. What the Bionis and Mechonis both have to offer might in tandem be a very beautiful thing, should the creation be approached with love and care.

By using as his vector of cohesion one he already cares about, Egil knows he will maintain pride and honor in this venture. It is so hard, now, to cling to brighter impulses. So easy to slip away into darker thoughts.

Minoth is mellow and contemplative, but laughs with spirit, every once in a while.

They will be the stronger for this. Egil feels it with each wire, laid alongside muscle and sinew; each spark, plying oxygen through vital blood. He'd designed special channels to house the additional components (fleshy and invigorous, perhaps, wholly imprecise, but components all the same) and closes each one with care and a firm snap.

On Minoth's back, ether collectors have been mounted to ensure that he will never be lacking for energy or sustenance - and these connectors also help to interface with Copperhead, of course. Egil happens to think them stylish.

Everything about this procedure has received Egil's utmost attention and care, and he has checked for Minoth's approval at every step.

"I think I'd do this again, just to be here having you work on me," Minoth jokes.

Egil's eyes lid halfway at his crude joke, but he strokes the scar marking memory of the last time this had happened with a single gentle fingerpad all the same. After that, he applies the mechanical anaesthetic, and watches Minoth's own eyes methodically close.

And then, it's done.

Sealed with a kiss, his and their yet surviving hope for their joint world, together in a boundless sea of time and space, ether and water.

While Minoth is seated in Copperhead for his final checks before departing to Bionis for surveillance, Egil stands back and watches from afar.

This...it's hard to quantify, even to qualify, what he, they, have done. Body modification is nothing new to Machina. They swap parts all the time, and work diligently on their headdresses when it's time to come of age. Minoth himself has invested great pride in his own personal color palette, combinations of that beloved stark orange and a cool teal-cyan blue, with pale gold accents over brown panels. Perhaps slightly incongruous, but quite handsome, to Egil. Even the carefully carved eyebrows, he has always admired.

Minoth's chosen colors are the colors of Homs colony soldiers, come to think of it. Maybe that's why this had seemed so amenable, within its own gruesome sphere. Though the people of Mechonis do not speak the same language as those of the Bionis (Machina, of course, learned the Bionis's common tongue, and Egil had spoken it quite ardently, to Arglas), Egil knows that Meyneth and Zanza did work together, once, long ago. Are they not produced of the same basic matter?

Still, regardless of the intended outcome, it is...alien, isn't it? Even somewhat profane? To mix biology with those who have persecuted their kind at such great lengths... No matter whether there are specially designed channels or not. Even, that fact might make the whole thing worse.

But those of Bionis do not all know of Zanza. Not like those of Mechonis know of Meyneth.

Minoth and Egil both know that if it is for peace and union, as once was thought so gloriously possible, Meyneth will approve. The pilot departs with her blessing and that of his companion.

ETA i found this 06/19 and then i deleted it while cleaning out my twitter 07/06

somewhat related to my last post if i wrote Egil/Minoth for no fucking reason except for me and B to assert dominance it would have to not coexist with Machina Minoth because then that would be like almost maybe a similar [power] dynamic to Amalthus/Minoth wrt the experiment. idk

my lore brain is falling out of my head but i can't think of any reason why the relationship between the first guy to step up to be made human-celled cyborg who got ever-so-slightly fucked up by it and the guy who did the surgery would be particularly sexy

meaning to say, since it went wrong (he did not go on to become a proper Face Pilot) that's not great. and it's not like. a sexy surgery to get. unless there's a weird fetishization of humanity going on. which is implied in the other direction. okay that's enough of this thread