Scene #9330: Star¤Twinkle Precure ~ The Mysterious Shining Moon ¤ Where Metal Grows?!

Owner	Pose
Dimokratia	The pages of a great book were pulled open, age-dried paper protesting faintly with the crinkle of use. Upon the pages, nondescript text - more runes of ink and brushstroke than clear text - heiroglyph across neat lines, telling a story in an ancient language. There are many pages that are turned through - and many have stories for another time. As each page turns, some pages reveal the shapes of figures or landscapes across muralesque layouts. Hills with eyes, flowers wreathed in flame, a diagram of a pipeworks like some newspaper maze - and a figure that the turning pages linger on. Crowned, with an eye-obscuring single bang and a long dress, the royal depicted is one of closed-eyed grace, and in her cupped hands floats a golden star on a page of age-turned tan and ink-black. Another turn of the page, and there is a second royal, depicted besides. There is a slight difference in skirting and coating, in height and span, but not in crowning, and not in the depiction of closed-eyed serenity as on left page, bang-covered royal offers to her opposite-paged counterpart (down, slightly) the golden star. And, besides, on page facing, the clear-faced royal does the same, offering (up, faintly) a golden star. Both appear to be giving, and not receiving, and both are lingered on before a final turn of the page reveals the radiant pop-out of an embossed binary star, two orbiting shapes in beatific gold. Narration joins the images. "A long, long time ago, the first Toadstool royals met with the Watcher of the Stars, Rosalina, as a shooting star passed over the night sky. A terrible storm had darkened every light in the Mushroom Kingdom, and hope dimmed with the waning of the last Power Star within the borders." "It was then that Rosalina descended from the dark clouds, attended by living starlight, to share with us the Binary Star - a Power Star beyond any others. In our darkest hour, the Binary Star lit the Mushroom Kingdom with new light, signifying the bond between peoples across the stars." The somber lights come up, and Princess Peach Toadstool claps gloved hangs together and smiles full lips, turning to address the camerapoint, which bobs up on Lakitu cloud. "Which is why, on the holy days marked by shooting stars, the Kingdom will be displaying this ancient treasure and hosting the Binary Star tennis cup and 150cc kart course! Don't miss one of the biggest sports events in Mushroom Kingdom history!" Peach cleverly swaps out her crown for a white racing helmet with visor, and before she can flip down the visor over her eyes her skirts and coats have changed out for sleek racewear in white and pink and a long scarf breaking up her frontal profile. "Yours truly will be representing the Kingdom to get the title back from the Koopa Kingdom after the Rainbow Road Invitational - see you there!" The transmission switches to a splash screen, branding for the Mushroom Kingdom Council for Tourism, a fanciful crowned royal seal, and a floating-sky-castle sort of image with the runes in titleage for Comet Observatory. This time, it's not Mao sending out the advert for those that look, but entirely separate people showing off treasures that they'd never look into otherwise. And, better, the situation on the ground is closer to Cybertron than the Pikmin planet: there's an actual landing and service zone within the atmosphere beaconing interstellar travelers! It's just... nothing like the surrounds in a way that feels like an entirely different sort of genre shift.
Dimokratia	Across several standard frequencies including wideband orbitally, landing instructions and approach vectors are transmitted and relayed. While there's warpgates on the ground that connect to several important locales within the greater Mushroom Kingdom and Dark Kingdoms, as well as the BeanBean mountains and other outskirt areas, none of those warpgates actually service vehicles of any appreciable size! While it'd be possible to get a sizeable vehicle onto the ground near Bowser's Castle (especially if it was a gyro stabilized flying clown cup), or any number of Go-Kart and land-sea-air sports vehicles into the racing zones and dynamic constructions. . . Love Prime has the supreme conundrum of being slightly too big in every dimension for conventional travel to the Mushroom Kingdom! However, there is a solution. The 'orbital' areas of vast and dense starscape above the odysseylands and eyed hills of monarchial turtles and tubers hang full of Star Gates are also full of places - little lands unto themselves, dwarf planetoids held together by a quizzical and pastel array of rainbow colors, somehow-stable microsingularities, rivets and bolts, hope and nonsense, and a whole lot of ground clutter. On some, plants grow. On others... there are Goombas. Somehow, even in the depths of space far from an atmosphere for them to travel in. . . there are vaguely mushroom shaped beings with four teeth and a suicidal need to walk forward until they can't, and then turn around and keep going. Simple, and, perhaps elemental, the Goomba flagrantly disobeys several natural laws and posits other ones in the strangely smoothed world, besides its brethren: floating blocks of bricks, questioning squares that stand relationally free where they will, and gold coins that spin alluringly. In this ecological niche, the Goomba trots blissfully unaware. A colorful wormhole Warpgate that expels space travelers out into orbit over the superplanet and the blazingly apparent knot of colorful zones beneath is besides a beacon that transmits Commonwealth greetings and invitations into the local space under flags of commerce and peace, as well as relays a signal from the ground from the Concord of similar (more commerce than peace, but they're more forward with the tennis and golf pushes) from the Dark and Sundew kingdoms. Crystal and metal, carbon and ceramic, the signal from the beacon is incredibly clear - tuned to a Galactic Standard frequency type as soon as Love Prime makes the communicative handshakes and opens channels for the ship's computer particularly like a foreign royal being welcomed with great and sudden joy from beneath. Singing in binaric and more complex maths, given the character of religious chants and hymnals, even listening to the pure sound of it sounds like an alluring aural stimulation track to pluck the welcome-home strings within synapse, to move the shared essence of circuit and forebrain and bend electric crackle into a joyous harmony. Falling down from the top of a chrome-splashed mountain, there's landing guidance like a glow, a trail of falling lights along a swaying filament cable that steers landing and allows for the brush of an automatic guidance system to draw the girls and their glorious intelligent chariot landward. As they descend, in low orbit -- low! -- is a planetoid, tumbling like a fat rock playing at hanging as a moon in the sky by closeness. The tumbling, hovering thing is one covered in grasses and colorful flowers and stone spires and craters and a little fenced in shake roof house with a chimney that seems pastorally out of place, with a small garden row two by four of truffula-ball trees, a rather large antenna setup dwarfing the height of anything else on the small planetoid. Chopped and rounded off spikes of sharper stalag-mights look more like barnacles or suckers from close, and a faint blue field of atmospheric retainment field glows brighter on approach . . .
Dimokratia	Which itself seems to have the character of a plastic bag lit from the inside, or an especially thin gossamer-silk sheet, and, the very faintest impression of a small face depicting >_< and several stress lines and sweat drops. The generator for the field chugs and hops along, sputtering as it pumps out the atmosphere that fills the irregular zone, which causes faint fluctuations in the exact dimensions of the contained space. It's like a forcefield, but: it's weirder. Lower and lower the girls are led, until Love Prime must turn and begin final descent, approaching an observatory-like mountain retreat set with discs of matte gunmetal and silver, pads of earth-tan veined by geometric lines and circuited from within like chunks of meat and nervous system as naked as hillside or cross-section. The whole place seems terraformed, changed, reshaped, and yet as seamlessly familiar as all the rest besides it save for the materials. The hills have optics, and the interconnected landing platform for mid sized rockets and aerial craft are surrounded by a midmountain cyberjungle. Organic-seeming metal trees are leafed and budded in intricate crystals, deposited as a tree might grow, and barked in carbon shells that give not just the illusion of form, but the actual cladding of organic shapes. A melt-line, like ice but for infiltrated soil, shifts from a synthetic cobalt blue and a too-white of 'icecap' simulacra that matches the nearby peaks of the other Star Hills to the fanciful royal blue of the local ground, richsparkling and even barely-buried fallen star piece featuring soil that evokes both the namesake and actual falling star phenomena of the area and also. . . How, perhaps, were the stars to cover this place entirely, all the peaks would be as wrapped in warm silver and crystal as the one Love Prime is guided to. The port area is bustling, several craft docked or landed there to offload goods, and the majority of the peoples there are sophonts of every sort. Humanoid formats are rare among the gathering, most moving on some form of track or wheel, others on long sets of point-shuffling millipede momentum, and more on some combinatory best-tool spill across the terrain as a graceful reorganization in space rather than 'moving'. Intermixed with these are more conventional quad and biped patterns, though the most humanoid pattern sorts are actually the locals, including the extremely excited but rather short paced motion of a man who might alternatingly be two feet tall and a very scrunched over five in a labcoat with coke bottle glasses and a lighterflame lick of white hair atop his otherwise smooth-bald head. He is, already, practically jumping for joy before Love Prime even lands! Practically. He's sort of shuffling up and making a fist raised gesture like someone might use to fist open a box, but, he's also somewhere between fifty and five hundred years old by the looks of him. Behind him, following at a measured pace that's glacial for her - one step for every half-dozen of Gadd's - is Dimo, arms crossed, carbon-dark lips smiling. She is nakedly mechanical today, a quantity of the usual semi-transparent carbon fill that provided a curtain or cladding over parts nonpresent and so she stands with only the faintest shaping bands of pale ceramic 'skin' spaced with the clear operation of the completely mechanical, respiring in the way of a reactor cycling. She hums warmly, thoughts distant and the synaptic crackle of her attention far away for a short moment before tugging thoughts back to the fore, the landing vessel from far away, and... What was most likely some more humanoids there to go-kart race with local royals.
Star Twinkle	"Lala, Lala! Look! There's another race going on!" "Lun? What's that, Hikaru? Are you watching something, lun?" "Uh huh, uh huh, and you gotta look!" Inside the cozy spaceship interior, with a couple stuffed animals drifting around in zero-G and a biiiig star-shaped window giving a view of the glittering starscape that surrounds it, Hikaru is watching an advertisement on the clunky pink CRT she lugged into space. She scootches to the side and pat-pats on the teal-colored pillow next to her for Lala to join her in staring at the intergalactic programming (the SPIRALY SATTELITE DISH being something reattached during the recovery on the Pikmin Planet). She clicks the remote to replay the ad, and they both lean towards the TV in synch while coming to the same conclusion. "Isn't that...?" "That's the planet Sarra's from, lun! It has to be!" "And that--! That's the Gemini Stellar Note! Lala, it's settled! We're going racing again!" Coming to the mutual conclusion that they should plot their next course to the Mushroom Kingdom, Lala floats over to her horshoe-shaped captain's chair, tapping her antennae to the sensors on either arm. In response, the entire array of lights in the ship glow to life and the screen flickers on, with the overhead light representing AI pulsing with her speech as she murmurs to herself. "It seems Miss Lilian was correct. These sorts of fortuitous run-ins have become more common as you've made more friends, Miss Lala." As the ship's thrusters revv up to launch into pathing towards the nearest warpgate, Hikaru throws a fist into the air with a triumphant expression. "And soon, we'll have friends in every corner of every galaxy! Twincool~¤!" A short time later, after a screen wipe and transition through the OP, the girls are brought completely to a halt by... interstellar highway regulations! In a line of all other kinds of shapes and colors of spaceworthy vessels, floating signs give warnings for the maximum dimensions allowed by the upcoming warpgates around the Mushroom Kingdons, and Hikaru is stymied by the idea that a spaceship can't just 'squeeeeze a little bit' to get through local infrastructure. Legs crossed, fingers wrapped around her chin in intense furrowed thought, Hikaru's contemplation on how to salvage the (space)roadtrip are accompanied by Yuma floating next to her, fluid-light facial glow shifting between numbers, question marks, and variably squishy or rigid circles. "And how many feet are in a meter again?" "Approximate 3.28, Miss Hikaru." "Uuuu... but you figured out a new thing you could do with the transformation cog that Mister Onslaught gave you on Capella A. Are you sure there isn't a smaller camper van in there somewhere?" "There may be, Miss Hikaru, but it isn't within my database to know how. My apologies. A full analysis by Mother would enable me to know the full extent of my capacities, but until that time, I am sorry for my unreliability." "No... you don't need to apologize, AI! We'll figure another way out! We'll follow the signs!"
Star Twinkle	The clusters of little themed planetoids in the orbital space above the Mushroom Kingdoms are the most familiar concept of 'space' that this sector has for Lala, compared to the Starscape Galaxy. Hikaru has her face plastered to the window to observe the passing planetoids, because they're all 'galacterrific' of course, and given the opportunity, would try to domesticate a goomba by playing the most linear game of fetch imaginable. Once AI picks up the Commonwealth radio signal, it's Yuma that perks up in fascination at the sound. After some repetitions of the messages, Yuma carefully tries to modulate her own synthesized voice to 'sing' in a similar tune, MIDI theremin sliding pitches mimicking the pattern of speech. Eventually, AI roars into the airspace above the port on the mini planet, and gradually eases off of her jets to lower down to the ground. She's blissfully apathetic to the robotization of their surroundings, but Hikaru and Lala are both enthralled, gawking out the window and pressed against the porthole in a way to cause Lala to clumsily tumble out when the cutesy pink spaceship lands and the door hisses open. Hikaru rushes out after her to pick her up off the ground and dust her off, with the Star Drop floating out behind her. While Lala dizzyeye recovers from falling onto the chrome dirt, Hikaru greets the ones welcoming them to the planet-- and the event! "Hi! I'm Hikaru Hoshina! I love stars and constellations! And this is Lala! Is this where we can sign up for the Rainbow Road Invitational? Or-- is this the kind of place where AI-- where Love Prime has to sign up instead?" Hikaru puts a hand on the back of her head, winking one eye shut and looking around at the crowd of sophonts. "You're an AI too, right? Right? This place is soooo astrordinary! Do the trees actually grow like that?"
Dimokratia	The Gateway "Planet" as operated by the joint work of the preeminent scientist-inventor Professor Elvin Gadd and the Commonwealth's robotic member-group, the Silver, serves as tethered receiving area as well as outreach point - a first step towards the stars. It would be a leap, but you see, Professor Gadd does not have the legendary Hops required to get that kind of air, and rather delicate hands for the striking of blocks, so really. . . He had needed help. The Silver had been all too eager to provide it as soon as the partnership was floated given their skill with gathering orbital debris into useful arrangements, terraforming, and their own general outreach designs. "Hello! Greetings! Yes, hi!" Ramblespoke the thickly spectacled professor. His tone lingers on some words, then comes staccato quickly after like a tape catching up with itself or a rope coming taut. Despite the rudimentary few ways he expresses himself - a mix of 'a uke-uke' and 'mmm, yabu-yabu!' and other strange noises that are near speech - the translation effect gives him the downright profile of an aging professor absently bouncing between topics with his mind on something non-conversational constantly and the jostling of that thought around like unfinished work at the workbench disrupts his flow. "I am Professor Gadd, and this is," Gadd begins, turning to look at Dimo's bare banding and bar and actuator faintly shelled in ceramic contours and tracks up and makes a little 'eh!' of indicative quarter-jump at Dimo, and the great sophont champion makes a noise like a turbine's briefest activation before lowering down into an almost-kneeling crouch that expresses and balances the filiment-white haired champion down onto Lala and Hikaru's level. There, it's clear, from the mechanical depth of her complex optics that adjust with pale blue inner light to accentuate every adjustment and focusing-in on the pair - on Hikaru specifically - that it was certainly no person in armor. The seams upon her plate-pale face are deep, and the details in her cheeks come from the subtle shifts of segmented parts in simulation of micromotions. "I am Dimo of the Silver, Champion of my people and the primary backer of this outreach mission, to lift the peoples of this world into the many worlds of theirs close at hand, as this professor Gadd wishes." Dimo explains, her attention like directing a warm hug towards the listener and dripping each syllable into their ear as a pleasant honey. The ends of her sentences trail with a hum that is breathable like a gas, concentrating in the center of the chest and retaining a warmth there that lingers for whole seconds - and minutes if the user continues to breathe deeply. Each sense is stroked, as a pathway through the phantom-to-real firing of the nerves, and it isn't a translation effect that she speaks with but directly to the understanding and knowing parts that the inner ear processes for, and the brain usually receives chopped up and slimed with impurities giving the faint heat-fry of her voice and hot mirage of her tone a particularly spinal clarity. "I--" Dimo begins, and like an impossible battering ram E. Gadd somehow interrupts the divine motions she makes through the audible spectrum with his own text boxed based bullhorning. "Yes!" He yabus. Then frowns. "No." He pauses. Dimo, turning with a completely aback 'THIS guy' that even makes it to the pan of her optics, doesn't get another sentence in before the professor carries on.
Dimokratia	"Yes!" He yabus in restart, nodding sagely as if he wasn't crashing through the conversation with no survivors. "This is not where you can sign up for the race. But you're in the right place! But not for the Rainbow Road Invitational, that was two months ago! Ha!" The ending starts to sound like laughter but ends in a few coughs. Gadd resumes like nothing happened. Dimo's optics have tracked back to the girls, but the palpable buzz of the champion's 'I'll let him finish' progresses his every text box rather than swerving back across the madman. "This is where you may sign up for the Binary Star one hundred and FIF-" The 'uwaba-waba' he gets turns into another set of coughs. A reassuring hand from Dimo pats Gadd a few times on the upper back, and he visibly looks better afterwards. "-ty cee cee cup or tennis portion? Doubles tennis, I presume? " "Both, professor." Dimo helpfully corrects. "They are here for the prior kart invitational in error. Clearly, it is vehicles as well as the doubles tennis." Gadd adjusts his glasses with his whole palm, peering at Hikaru first, and then Lala, and then rights with a clear moment of back strain. "BOTH THEN!!" Gadd exclaims, perhaps too excitedly, and definitely with another half-jump-with-fist confirmatory hop, before turning and normal walking (tottering) back away from the platform. Presumably, to get the forms. Leaving the girls with just Dimo, still crouched. "I--" She begins, and waits, and then buzz-hums and smiles as Gadd doesn't jumpscare appear a text box into her lane, and continues. "--might be colloquially understood as an 'artificial intelligence', but my people are most-specifically sophonts - reasoning beings possessing true intelligence. My people, the Silver, are a network intelligence of individuals who seek to support others in the world, act as good neighbors, and spread understanding where we go. This mission is but one of many - though you, specifically, are someone I came to meet in person:" Dimo hangs on Hikaru. The camera hangs on Hikaru. Dimo does not say Hikaru's name. The camera is on Dimo, crouched there, as her gaze is not quite centered on Hikaru, but. . . A dot line point drags a line from Dimo in bird's eye diagramming where she is looking: "Lala, as the caretaker of 'Love Prime', independent fork of planetary mainframe 'Mother', I personally welcome yourself as well as Love Prime to this place. Please think of it as welcoming you home, and if there is anything you require or desire while you're here, please, let us know." There's a long (exactly two second) pause before Dimo's smile and attention, crackling and warm, returns to Hikaru. "Both grow and become as that, Hikaru. The crystal trees of our home-moon we spread in memory and relay both, and if they could not grow, then they could not become more complex - the divine right of all living things. They are not shoddy piles of simulacra, but whole things, living, creating."
Star Twinkle	"I am Professor Gadd, and this is," Hikaru's eyes widen and sparkle as Dimo leans in for a closer look. The vibrating 'spacetacular...!' under her breath feels like something she'd rather shout while zipping around Dimo as her Weird New Specimen of the week, but in this particular instance, she manages to hold it in-- for the same reason that Dimo doesn't just bulldoze through the bobbleheaded cokebottle glasses old scientist's babbling either, though Hikaru's is more fondly felt. The same 'I won't interrupt him' expression is on her face as she earnestly listens. For Lala, it's not even a question that no amount of yabu-yabu conversational distraction could sway her from treating E. Gadd respectfully. After the embarrassing tumble she took out of the ship, it's twice as important for her to present a rational, adult face of the pair. "I'm a traveller from Samaan, lun. Lala... Hagoromo, lun." "But not for the Rainbow Road Invitational, that was two months ago!" "Right, right, ehehe." Hikaru rubs the back of her head with her eyes closed, twintails bobbing awkwardly. "I got a little distracted, but, um, what I meant was, the..." "The Gemin-- Binary Star Tennis Cup and 150cc Kart Course, lun." "Mouthful... no wonder I forgot it, huh...?" Hikaru briefly grouses, before popping back up excitedly. "That one! What's a CC cup, anyways? And does a camper van count as a kart? Do you know a person named Princess Sa--" "Yes, sir please! Dimo is right, lun!" Lala hastily interjects before Hikaru's cheerful cluelessness causes Professor Gadd to go off on another tangent. She puts a hand on her chest to sigh, then turns to Hikaru with a faintly admonishing look. "Hikaru lun, it's not efficient to hold people hostage to answer every question you have right when you meet them. We have a race to get to, lun." "But I don't wanna just get to the race! I wanna know! About racing, and this world, and--" Unshackled, Hikaru immediately zips over to Dimo to circle around the sophont and inspect the electrical glow, the exposed mechanisms and wiring, the flowing tendrils of metal, with naked fascination. "And you, Miss Dimo! Like, who built you? Or did you build yourself! Oh, oh, I think the Cybertronians do that! Did you want to be that tall? I kind of want to be that tall. What's your hair made of? Is this not your home planet? Then how come's it all robot-y like you? Did you build it?? Twincoo~ool!" Meanwhile, Lala has a thoughtful expression while listening to Dimo. "Sophont... I hadn't heard that word before, lun." The display on the back of her singular glove lights up, and a synthesized feminine voice emanates from it. "In Japanese, the most appropriate word would be 'Chiteki'. I'll display the kanji for you to study once you return to the ship, Miss Lala." "Ohh, thanks, AI." "Um, I'm surprised to meet another AI that has a face, but it's nice to meet you, lun. It seems more common in this galaxy than in where I'm from." Then, her eyes widen and she points to herself with one finger, and then to the spaceship with an antenna bulb. Hikaru, in the midst of her thick-outlined flat-colored background animation cycling through four separate poses around Dimo, freezes as she's seemingly addressed, and then beams with equal pride that it's Lala being invited instead.
Star Twinkle	"That's right!" Hikaru puffs up her chest, with the unspoken 'huhu' audible at the end. "Lala's an incredible genius with working with AI. She's super smart and she piloted us all the way here with AI, and everyone's lucky to meet her!" "H-Hikaru!" Waving away her flustered blush and the brief glow from her antennae, Lala looks down away from Dimo's eyes and fiddles with the computer on her glove nervously. There's clearly something she isn't quite willing to say to the contrary of Dimo's praise, and that she isn't saying it evidently makes her feel guiltily uncomfortable. "And, um... thank you for welcoming me so kindly, lun. If there's some way I can help... contribute...? then I'll do it, lun." "It has been [Fifty-Four Weeks] since I have synchronized with Mother. Miss Lala, please bring me to her chamber as soon as is convenient." "I know, lun... but you're gathering lots of data, aren't you?"
Dimokratia	Professor Gadd, still hustling into the crowd of assorted sophonts servicing the light spaceport, heading for the cottage house, which he operates the door of and disappears within. It takes him a good amount of time to get there, what with the stubby legs and the lack of hops! Hikaru is well to not pester Gadd, because she can see - while Lala stops her - the alternate possibility of Several Consecutive Minutes of Ramble-And-Wander escort! If she hoped to hyperspeed bounce around Dimo unshackled, this is right where she wants to be! "You wish to know, and I wish to share, Hikaru." Dimo promises with tone and buzz. "This world is a world of incredible biogenic diversity with several interesting embodied spirits and living plant and fungal species that make up a highly complex ecology. A multitude of feudally arranged societies center around empowered royalty, most notably of which being Princess Peach Toadstool - a divine spirit of a fungus people, though she appears humanoid. A gnome-like humanoid race appear here and there - of which Professor Gadd belongs - and which several notable heroes belong to." Her shell, as she's orbited by the pink-type Precure, every naked whirr and faint click and silent shift of liquid fluting eddies of pressure through her silver and exuding fluctuations in the penumbra of her sunny aura - a kind of respiry, an atmospheric communion that isn't breath. There is a faint simulation of it that Dimo provides in vocalization, a needlerasp against recordsurface, but her frame is still and her chest does not shift with the sound. "As for myself," Dimo begins with pride. "My father is the greatest hero of our people, and the first divine consort of our exalted Mother, from whose union the shape of our people was reforged and struck anew." Dimo's narration has the character of a passionate sermon, yet hum-sung in soft sinewave melody from the heat of her convictions as she shares it. She loves this, clearly. More than just performing, she is this. "My sister and I are their direct creations, built in love and with purpose, champions from birth to carry all of the virtues inherent and bring them to this Sector Zero with our expeditionary force to explore, and align, and be good neighbors to our allies the Commonwealth." The pulse of her mechanicals, plain insight to her, hum and tink cheerily to the interested eyes and ripple with analogous motions to muscular flexes entirely for Hikaru's delight, particularly showing off the stillness of frame yet a grand reweaving until the tension departs out of lower back through her trails, pooling in skirted cords in a faint U as wings behind her that Hikaru steps over. When the Precure is past the first, it raises, 'sneaking' behind her to tap her on one shoulder and dip to the other side, where if properly rused, Hikaru will walk up into being flanked by both the raise of the other and the swing-about of the tapping one. Dimo, turning her eyes from Lala while her trails give Hikaru a goodnatured and warm-water splash of contact without the wet, a hug and twirl about and pat pat all in a single clever motion to set the Precure at the end of her orbit. Then, her trails settle and lay back behind her on the landing pad, their show complete, an implied 'hands behind back' compromise of fully animate metalimbs. "My soul was born to divine love, and my body formed with purpose in mind and after learning from the great sages and paragons of our people." The 'children are wonderful' smile across her face is happy to admit:
Dimokratia	"I did choose to be this tall. It is an optimal balance for me between presentability to the majority humanoids of this Sector, personal power output based on scale of systems, and presence." 'Presence' is plain in unspoken ways, but it might surprise Hikaru and not Lala who can sense Dimo's attention palpably like an electrostatic field brushing her antenna-deelies like a sensory-rich breeze or pool she's dipped in: Dimo might not be able to be any smaller and fit all the systems she thrums with all at the same time, and the contouring and cleverness was an elegant shape around an incredible amount of hardware secreted inside the Silver. "I could help you realize that dream, Hikaru. Please, speak any shaping wishes you have to me and I might speak to you of divine and wonderful solutions." She offers to hopes of tallness, easing that one like floss between Hikaru's ears and letting the electric threads of it spool through her brainstem in contours and possibilities. Lighting Hikaru's imagination ablaze might be easy but Dimo spills a particularly metallic dye into the insinuation the synapse provides. "My hair is a self-maintaining filament extrusion - it is actually -" Dimo begins, and her silverwhite hair blends together, sticks and runs and goops until it's indistinct from the two trails coming off her back, running together into a thick silver ponytail-shape. "A sensory and communication surface arranged aesthetically." Millions of antenna, hair-fine, worn as a fashionable haircut, are revealed as Why Lala feels like she's standing deelie-to-hand with Dimo from as far away as she is. Hikaru's barrage of questions has worked! This time... "This is not my home planet, no." Dimo carries on in her replies, shifting to offer up a hand to Lala from her Speaking to Children crouch. Floating in her palm is the simulacra of a silver moon with a large crystal tree that rises out of the surface. In the most detailed scalar, the tree is revealed as a grand set of boughs and branches and run with lights and shapes, with platform forks and shining pad-leafs. Yggdrasil in chrome and crystal, even the simulacra sings. "I was sparked to self within the crystal tree, far away. A place anyone can go, where all are invited. It is a space-port, a place of all call, and my people provide free passage towards the core. As well," The champion's other hand sways about towards the hillside the Gateway Planet mission extends into the terrain and planet, the gesture bidding the budding and blooming of a wash of dark grasses with filament ribs to their blading that glow with inner light and groundflowers to unfurl lotus-like from the ground timelapsed from planting to maturation in the span of a wide gesture. "We share, spread, and offer alignment in countless ways and forms towards more complex and divine arrangements - as is the right of all intelligent beings. This place," Dimo pauses to lower her gesturing-out hand, the spread of Silvered grasses and flowers not stopping but spreading in complimentary opposite to the rounds of bright natural flowers. The ground, a stunning cobalt mesh, visibly veins and spreads through the darker tan asteroidal ground of the grassless terrain of the Gateway Planet, the timelapse of grasses and flowers spreading through enough land to allow for another whole round of metal flowers in a pool of glowing-spined dark grass. "-is one of several locations harmoniously offered to us to build upon and improve, in communion with the peoples here. I have left part of this place unaligned to suit Professor Gadd's style while he homes here on the mission, but when he fully hands over the control to us we will serve as the stewards of this gateway to the stars."
Dimokratia	Again, Lala can follow the impulse of attention, the electrical field's hot shift, and more, sense some sort of energy or signal from the blades of grass! There's a live connection there to brush, if she's brave enough. "To be simple about it: Yes, I have built this place, and our partnership has drawn many Multiversal interests here for trade. The Silver is both 'my people' and the divine medium and instrument of our souls and its spread is, simply, the spread of our soul and culture." "It is beautiful," She declares, without hedge, for she knows it is. "For how close to divine it is in form: unlimited in its complexity, bounded by the imagination of an unbound soul." While Hikaru goes into 'Twincoooooo~oool!', and Lala considers, it's Lala that gives the most insightful observation on Dimo so far: 'I'm surprised to meet another AI that has a face' Dimo's glow, her warmth to the 'you got it!' of Lala's insight, leaks through her cheek-seams as she nods, the flourish of her fingers still holding the homeland model seeming to indicate or dream of an affirming stroke that is still felt in the inner ear of tone. "It is for you, sweet delight. So you understand in your way. It is for me, as I love it, but it is for you, and has purpose." An important - and to her, divine - distinction for the champion. "Do you like it, Lala?" Smiles the sophont. "I have other faces, if you would know me other ways. Would you enjoy that?" Despite the fluster and hesitance out of Lala, Dimo is quick to agree a happy-hummed "I certainly am." in humu-humu buzz to the luck of meeting Lala. "If you would like to contribute, then," Dimo makes a faint 'mmm' of thought despite having already decided several things she wanted immediately. "I would be honored to work closely with an incredible genius. And, perhaps, you could contribute to my understanding as well - I would be most interested in this 'data synchronization' and an exchange of information with Love Prime, to share with this beautiful foreign dignitary in a manner we are both comfortable in, and hope eagerly to share in your expertise. Your star charts, especially, would be of immense interest to us."
Star Twinkle	Hikaru so wishes to know. She meant it, when she unleashed her torrent of questions, and faced with the rare subject who elaborately and enthusiastically enaswers her curiosity, Hikaru would never dare not pay rapt attention. In her travels all throughout space, every planet has some fascinating trait, from its people to its culture to its landscape, and every new answer she gets is a new precious treasure. Dimo may not be the first eight foot tall robot woman on a metal planet Hikaru's met, but where the Cybertronians explained that sometimes people turn into electric guitars just because they want to (which is still twincool!!!), Dimo's exposition is.... " . . . world of incredible biogenic diversity . . . make up a highly complex ecology . . ." "Uh huh uh huh!" ". . . feudally arranged societies center around empowered royalty . . . Princess (!!!)" "Princesses! Galacticool! Like Princess Sarra!" ". . . divine spirit of a fungus . . ." "Wow! I didn't know mushrooms had those!" It's just a little harder to follow! Hikaru's enthusiasm for the density of information provided to her far outscales her ability to absorb it on contact, so despite her sparkly-eyed active-listening noises, it's hard to tell really how much of Dimo's explanation she's internalizing. She can practically see the flat-color animated imagination bubble appearing over Hikaru's head with a mushroom with eyes sprouting four limbs, walking into church, and putting on a crown. This image smushes against the image of Sarracenia in Hikaru's mind a few times, but fails to reconcile. "My sister and I are their direct creations," "Oh. I was also the direct creation of my mom and dad," Lala exposits right next to Dimo, with considerably less pride. "My original job wasn't to explore, lun, but I'm doing it anyways, because.... And Mother made AI too, lun." "Not me! My parents found me in a ring of mushrooms in the woods as a baby!" "O-oyo?! Is that true?!" "No, eheh. But it should be!" Hikaru is predictably fascinated by metal that moves, and isn't just a simple human or animal replacement part like a cartoon robot. Her enthrallment with the 'extra' limbs is plain on her face, and, blind to anything else, she whirls around when her shoulder is tapped and gets a faceful of morphmetal sploosh for her surprise. Giggling, she moves to wipe it off, only to find that none of it's actually stuck to her face like water, and the only thing remaining is the warm tingling sensation. From that context alone, and whatever mental associations are going on behind her eyes, she concludes, "Oh! It's like Lala's antennae!" Lala frowns thoughtfully. She reaches out an antenna towards Dimo, with Yuma hugged to her chest in her arms, and sends a faint zap of electricity to bristle the static between them like goosebumps. "Lun. It is, actually." "It is an optimal balance for me between presentability to the majority humanoids of this Sector, personal power output based on scale of systems, and presence." Hikaru is entirely clueless on matters of systems and personal power output, but presence is something she understands, through a certain lens. She wanders back over to rejoin adjacency with Lala, seeing that Lala hasn't moved her feet an inch from where they were when this dialogue started, and starts pacing around her like a restless cat while looking up at Dimo. "Right! Because, it's best to be ten meters tall, but buildings aren't made for that. But if you're just two and a half, you're taller than everyone and can go inside without just looking through windows like King Kong. I get it! Maybe that's the tallest I'd want to be too... but it'd be nice to switch... humhumhmmm...."
Star Twinkle	Then Hikaru looks up in surprise. "Wait, really? You can do that? I could have a big machine to..." Fuzzy connections spark clearer in Hikaru's mind, aided along by alien brainstem-flossing. "Ohh... turning me into one..." Sensing danger (of Hikaru wandering off to get turned into a thirty foot tall robot RIGHT NOW TODAY), Lala tugs on her arm to bring her back to reality. "We're on our way to a race, Hikaru! You should... schedule something not-now, lun." "Right! We'll visit your real home planet sometime!" Hikaru declares authoratatively, hands on her hips. "I want to know, too, lun..." Lala lowers her voice, trailing off. Her antenna brushes through the static thick in the air, and she crouches down with her knees tucked to her chest. When exposed to something so interesting and new as this, she would be brave enough to prod at it even if she wasn't sensing the invitation to. A pulse of electricity glows in the bulbs of her antennae for a moment, pinging into the metallic flora with a ¤Hello! Friend-handshake?¤ "You're really really friendly, lun. I haven't met anyone who talks like this since leaving Samaan. So I'm kinda curious about seeing it too, lun...." Yuma interjects, snuggled into Lala's arms. Her face spins around with light-streaks until they settle into a pulsating green-glow flower shape, whose petals break off into spinning circles. "--_¯¯¯__--¯¯¯¯!" "Lilian did too; that's right, lun. And she's friendly too." "Do you like it, Lala?" Headpatted by the divine aura, Lala stares blankly up at the robotic face hiiigh above her for a few seconds. Craning backwards while crouching makes her lose her balance, tumbling backwards onto her rear, and she hastily stands back up and nods. "Lun! You're very pretty. I've thought some about how Angela has a face, and the Cybertronians have faces, but... it seems more common than not, lun? But even Mother doesn't have a face, or not one I've seen. And she works with Samaanians just fine." "Data on Mother's core is the only information excluded from Personal AIs in the network. So I know no more than you do, Miss Lala." AI's voice is synthesized apologetic, though there's an unusual air of curiosity along with the unspoken interest in knowing. "I don't know what other ways you mean, lun." Lala pouts, now self-conscious that she's missing something. "Are there other ways I should? Will you be racing with us, lun?" "Do I have permission to share star chart data, Miss Lala?" "Lun. Exchanging information with Dimo would get you data that you couldn't get anywhere else, right, lun?" "Correct. I'd be very interested in the unique data I could learn about Miss Dimo's society and technology by such correspondence. As would Mother, very likely." "Then you should do it, lun! But maybe... not right now."
Dimokratia	As her form shifts through the complexities of her moment to moment existence, and is orbited by Hikaru with question and answer time, Lala takes her own very first 'step' towards understanding and communicating with Dimo and seeing another of those promised faces. The electrical signal expands into the warmth of Dimo's active synapse-attention, and the results are visible to even Hikaru's eye, but fully tactile to Lala's senses. Linkages, the spreading of invisible relays of laser-like heat alignment between scattered single microparticles making patterns and chains of data, a whole atmospheric network that shines like the revealed shadows and shapes shown by paper underlit by Lala's bulbs and simple touching. For Hikaru, it is as if Lala touched the air and the whole of it came alive in a warm mirage of chaining constellations. There are little sizzles, signals there that vibrate as even more refined interlocks than laser-links, bending the native heat of the Champion into a digital presence as well. Though she lacks lungs, this to Dimo is like breathing, and the faint flexing of the field being contacted touches the cheeks of this face known only as energy and warmth. The hot light from her core, shielded enough to not be burning and blinding, is a signal all of its own, and it sings on a spectrum of frequencies. Lullabies, love songs, sweet promises - sweet truths, attention in every positive way and a long and detailed contemplation being worked on deeper still. Lala knows Dimo takes her measure. She floats in warm attention, as does Yuma, but Lala has the sensory organ to touch and feel and brush the subtle glissando of the information travelling. Touch-sense, bound by light and heat, brushing this second face and feeling the contours of Dimo reveals more and more, that she is larger as a presence than even in her body, and there is so much more that crackles within to throw this all off. And all the while, Hikaru is drooling about proper scale and contemplating the finer-to-finest points of scale. "Ten meters? I know those that will argue that anything less than one hundred simply lacks the room for 'true' divinity. Those mega-entity types within our network are free to pursue their dreams of being large, hyper-complex and specialized installations, but you strike upon the most important point that decided for me: There is a given general maximum of scale for humanoids - I am at an ideal scale tofit through doors indeed." Dimo's warmth turns a different sort of prideful, the 'I don't agree with them but it so works for them' flavor of remote praise. "My sister, Kratia, insists that life begins at ten meters and maturity can't even be seen until fifteen. I prefer to think that she underdeveloped her sensors in her youth and is using personal anecdotes for growth." She comments as she carries on with her deliberate mental flossing of Hikaru. Scale wasn't just allowed - there would be scale debates, and she could be the pioneer of a true format! And... "Multi-format bodies are common, if that is what you desire." Dimo's delight at the self-selection, at the self-imaging that Hikaru does buzzes about the pink Precure, not just pleased but affirmative and further-guiding as she reels and tightens. "It is so flattering you approve of my own form, and though I highly recommend its merits. . . you must be better able to imagine a wonderful and complex and truly divine Hikaru, that's right!" She agrees like 'turning herself into a robot' was Hikaru's whole idea, and Dimo was happily receiving this information. "I would love to consider this with you,"
Dimokratia	'You should... schedule something not-now, lun.' Dimo is beatific, as if Lala spoke the truest reason. "Yes, so right. Let's schedule something." She agrees, especially at 'visit your real home planet'. "Will you have time after the race? There is some distance involved, but that might not be a problem for you." Dimo asks, and then, glances at Yuma as if they were the real secret. And they were! But Lala asks while crouching down, tucking knees to chest. Outstreching, outreaching, her antenna grow a different sort of pleasantly stimulated - this one far more tingle than warmth, the pleasant crisscross of electric signals and positive exchange of energy. Palms upon the shielded generator of her soul, gaining an intimate sense of her background buzz, Lala crouches down to investigate the marvels of the cybernetic flora, and like a star rising at dawn, the flowers turn towards, and the grasses waft as if seeking her touch, and she sends out a handshake request. ¤Greeting!¤ ¤(Welcome!)¤ ¤Friend to Speakers//Friend to Knowers//Friend to You¤ ¤(Welcome!)¤ ¤This outpost operating in Auxiliary Mode!¤ ¤(Welcome!)¤ ¤Low-yield energy transfer only.¤ ¤(Welcome!)¤ ¤Query atmospheric data?¤ ¤(Please Ask, Learn, Understand!)¤ It's not an unmanageable flow, but there's a lot of signal, and the white noise isn't static but even more dense, uncompressed data that Lala simply isn't equipped to get hosed down with. The boilerplate, the glowing letters that even a simple machine intelligence or biologically gifted or designed individual could interpret: 'If you can see this: you're a friend', and then. . . The atmospheric data seems innocuous enough. And Lala can handshake with that, touch her antenna to the flowers, and understand the Silver's entire atmospheric data footprint, for the entire microplanetoid. Lala doesn't just touch the flowers, but she feels them, as the flower, and the artificial breeze as it passes through all the blades of grasses like the wind through her hair at a macro scale. Lala's electrical signal travels across the silver branches and lingered in the crystal leaves, prisming as light through the diffracting colors and further saturating with complexities -- as if she belongs here. Just here! Just in this space, and time, and this world some second greater network she slides through the tubes and sworls and channels of. Dimo looms. Lala falls back, and sitting in the grass even reveals that trick: Direct current, if she goes for the receiving of charge. Small, seeking pulses sense her out like faint brushes of a crackling feather across nerves until it is applied and poured onto, into, a long drink of ''water'' that doesn't have to stop for air or gulping, the filling-up of whatever charge-holding inner wellspring she has. It might even go directly to her personal vitality! As safe to leave the plug for a toaster lost in the grass as to stand bare-metal in it and be granted sweet respite and lifting of the draining burden, Lala discovers: the grass is a charging surface.
Dimokratia	Crouching down again, this time to eye level with Lala particularly, another perfect motion of effortless weight redistribution bears the champion down to address the green Precure and her pink satellite every rotational passing (with a smile), her trails gingerly sweeping about as if to ensure Lala doesn't fall a second time -- that she'd be caught, held gently. "Faces are a way of interacting. Most humanoids have faces, don't they? But you're so much more correct than you know." Tender, addressing a genius in this field who has clearly been treated less than well - and that will all change, starting now, the very air sings - Dimo reaches to touch the back of her index knuckle to Lala's cheek, jointing brushing down the softness there. "They are not the only one. They are not even the best one. They are just the one that the most usual pattern of the Sector perceive first. My Mother - the one who built me, with love, and purpose? She does not have a 'face', as you might understand it. A head, yes, but our most holy guiding star advanced beyond representing the narrow and least-complex shapes of self, the simulacrum of signals that were imperfect compared to more pure communication. She, and many others of my people in her likeness and format, choose to completely do away with facial features for any number of reasons. Some never had them, and others upon gaining the divine choice quickly learn that it is vestigial to themselves. The most radiant sages, those who still remain from the time of our mother's ascension and homeland's founding, are to a one among these 'faceless', for they are perhaps closest to the stellar nature of our mother, being originally embodied living flames themselves - though shaped like you and Hikaru. It ran through them, fire as blood. And now, that same flame still burns, in the hearth-center of our culture, contemplating the deepest mysteries of existence and becoming. The sages that I spoke of, that I learned from - it was those heroic elders of our people that I encountered, the paragons of the paths." Dimo tilts her head, and her fingertouch withdraws to her own lap. "I have learned already that the Samaanians are truly gifted people, and you are a marvelous explorer." She neither speaks the words frivolously or quickly, not having to, placing the full weight of truth on it all. "I would like few things more than to help you in this exploration - especially as it pertains to our people. I do not believe I will be racing - the Princess Peach is very competitive and the Lord Bowser declines to accept the results if it is not himself, the Princess Peach, or a 'Mario', some gnome hero, who wins. As one of the Toads, Toad, has put up several recent wins, the environment is a little... too heated for diplomacy." Translation: Dimo thinks she would win, and knows that herself winning would be politically bad, since it'd damage relations with the person currently giving her things like land and microplanets and little oversight. "You will both do incredibly, I am completely sure. Just as sure I am about how enriching a data-sharing operation will be between myself and Love Prime will be."