[H█MAN]

//This book will feature elements and sometimes even characters from other shows. Biomega is the most prominent one as the story of that manga is said to be the prequel to Blame! But you might also see some Ghibli characters appear, although they may be OOC due to the depressing setting that the world takes place in.//

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Broken and abandoned buildings lined the ground and sometimes even the ceiling of the silent, metallic level Pathos found himself in. He'd been wandering for a few days without rest, not that he needed it. 96 hours have passed since he first arrived on this level. Pathos had picked a direction with the most human-like readings from his DRADIS and walked that way. Still, the trek was agonizingly long for human standards. But for a non-ageing organism like him... it hardly registered.

The only real way for immortal existence to notice the passage of time is through the change that inevitably happens around itself. The universe can expire before an immortal, lonely being even realises it. But, for an eternal creature that lives with a mortal population, the passage of time is anything but pleasant. What they once called family and friends will all eventually turn to dust and the world as they know it will forever change, whether they like it or not.

As such, human contact is both a blessing and a curse for Pathos. He doesn't want to be lonely, but at the same time... he doesn't want to feel pain. Emotional pain is worse than physical, as physical scars heal, but trauma stays forever until it is either forgotten or accepted.

So, Pathos walked. He walked and he searched every nook and cranny, looking for some signs of human life. The male machine couldn't be certain what was best for him as he wasn't new to socialising with other species. Not since the advent of Recreator at least...

"I miss you... Eon Green."

But that's distant, distant past now. He didn't know what happened to that massive spire, to its ecosystem and its people. But whatever it was, there was nothing he could do to change it. The most that could be done is vengeance, but against whom and what? Pathos didn't know, and as such, he pushed such thoughts away. They provided him with no aid in his search and certainly didn't help his mental state, at all.

He walked for many more hours, until, finally when he was walking down the deserted street of the seemingly unsystematically built buildings, did he spot someone. It was a female dressed in an all-blue uniform wearing a strange form of a gas mask. But what was most striking to Pathos was that he had to look up to see her. She was, after all, flying through the air on a strangely oval-shaped glider.

►19_NEW_DRADIS_CONTACTS!

The woman clad in blue was included in these new DRADIS contacts, making the total of unexpected guests 18. They were, of course, the default form of the Safeguards. The eerily humanoid mechanoids crawled across the walls, the ground and the roofs like some manner of a spider. Their speed was also pretty good, but they ultimately could not reach the girl with how high up she was.

But this also posed a problem for the blue-clad woman, as the Safeguards could maintain speed with her and therefore allowed her no reprieve from their presence. Should she land she would be torn to shreds within minutes.

Pathos... would not allow such a thing.

►WEAPONS_SYSTEMS...

►100%

►WEAPON_CONSTRUCTION_INITIALIZED...

►MULTIFARIOUS_SUPPRESSION_PHASER_CANNONS

From Pathos' back cylindrical objects came forth into existence, shaped similarly to his repulsion thrusters but with one fundamental difference, the colour they emitted was blue and there were about a few dozen of them. They have clustered together in the form of a cross right above where his spine and shoulder blades would be.

But... they were facing the wrong way...

"Beginning enemy suppression barrage..."

-BATOOOOOM-

Ultimately, it would be proved that it didn't matter where the small phasers were pointing as the beams they all fired simultaneously bent like wires and immediately blasted in the general direction of the Safeguards.

The blue-clad woman looked on in surprise, shock and awe as multiple blue lasers suddenly pierced the heads of all the Safeguards following her, creating a sizzling hole right between their once glowing red eyes. In a matter of seconds, the light show was over and the now-dead bodies of the Safeguards noisily fell to the ground like heaps of metal.

The blasters retracted back into Pathos' back before the woman could get a proper look at him, but it didn't take all of her brain cells to guess and pinpoint the male as the sole perpetrator of such a gruesome, subhuman scene.

Reluctantly, the girl glided down to the ground, just a few metres ahead of Pathos who stood there, stoically, as if waiting. With noticeable hesitation, the blue-clad female hopped off her glider which she parked in the middle of the street.

Now, the two stared at each other without saying anything. While Pathos stared into the bulbous eyes on the woman's helmet, the female herself could look the male directly into his strange, almost inhumanly beautiful blue and purple eyes.

After a solid minute, the girl reached for her helmet and pressed a button at the bottom of it. The sides of the helmet slightly expanded, allowing her to take it off with relative ease. The sight that greeted Pathos was... breathtaking, to say the least. The woman was utterly beautiful. Her hair was short, reddish-brown in colour and her eyes were hazel. Not a single imperfection was on her face, her skin as smooth as the finest pottery, almost too pure for the world to see.

"███? ████! ███, ████ ████ ████ ████."

...But problems arose when she spoke.

The woman talked in a language that Pathos did not understand. It was a language he never heard before, although he supposed that it was to be expected. After all, the cultural and physical evolution of human beings in an environment such as this would have many unforeseen side effects. It would seem his language database was outdated...

"I... can't understand you..."

As if hoping the girl would somehow do just the polar opposite of what Pathos just said, he spoke. The girl blinked when she heard the language that his words came to be from, clearly not understanding it at all.

"███ ███ ███████ ██?"

Clearly, his point didn't seem to get across... This left him with few options. Either learn the language naturally over the course of years and study or just... perform a neural link. The second option was a gamble to perform on a stranger... but Pathos didn't exactly have much of a choice here. He longed for human contact, and he didn't want to wait any longer.

And so, the male cyber lifeform spread his arms to the side, showing the girl he had no weapons on him and slowly started to walk towards her, "I mean no harm. I'm not an enemy. I am a friend."

The woman clad in blue was visibly alarmed by Pathos' actions and instinctively reached for the rifle strapped to her white glider. Yet, she retracted her hand soon after, seeing how slowly the nonhuman male was walking towards her with his empty hands clearly visible. Of course, trusting a stranger, especially one that was dressed in such highly-advanced and flashy armour was not a good idea. Yet, the woman was notoriously known for her big heart of gold, and one look into the man's otherwise lifeless eyes told her he meant no harm, even if that was just her instinct.

Finally, after an agonisingly long yet short walk, the male appeared within an arm's length of the blue-clad female. Slowly, he raised his hand and with his finger pointed at her temple, walked closer. The woman braced herself for something unexpected, and her assumptions were proven true a moment later as a brief headache passed her the moment the tip of the male's finger touched her.

Pathos noticed the woman's surprise, but right now, his mind was quickly processing the information he acquired. Through the brief contact, he was only able to acquire information about the language spoken in this world and was surprised to see it resembling an utter clusterfuck of Japanese, English, Spanish and Latin of all things. 1.4 nanoseconds have passed and Pathos had already analyzed and archived the language into his memory.

"...I apologize."

The woman's eyes widened when the once foreign-sounding male spoke fluently in the language she spoke since birth. Her eyes blinked twice, fighting off the surprise the best way she knew how, and that was by just rolling with it.

"Can you... understand me now?"

"Of course. I apologize for the headache, it should come to pass in about 14.8 seconds," the girl rose an eyebrow at the stoic, almost robotic tone that Pathos spoke.

The male this time extended his hand out again, although now it appeared that he was looking for a handshake rather than to poke a stranger between the eyes, "My name is Pathos. I am a... nomad, you could say."

The girl looked at his hand rather reluctantly, but she wasn't taught to be disrespectful towards travellers, especially not ones that literally saved her life. So, she, with some hesitancy, shook the male's hand.

...

...

...

"...My name is Nausicaä..."