Caught in the Courtyard

“Eh? Just inside? But they got hurt? Don’t the undead need to be like… fixed up manually?” The cyborg girl said, tilting her head. She didn’t mean any offense by the comment, her short lifespan, inherent knowledge generally missing the supernatural, and generally being a shut in left her relying on pop culture for much of her knowledge, a lot of which was from the narrow reality and was thus not accurate. She did notice he had leaned towards the package, and she had heard a muffled noise, so she trusted his words enough to listen.


Bringing her legs in closer, she lowered herself almost to the ground, her usually longer steps replaced by smaller scuttling in order to fit her boiler through the doorway. She had heard about the existence of charms that could help her, but from what she knew, they wouldn’t be able to help her, at least not the default models. For its size, her boiler was actually quite inefficient, using one of those shrinking charms would likely slow her down exponentially, especially if she were to go back to normal size, she’d lack the steam to defend herself. As for the other one… Well, it would get rid of her life support equipment, so that was mostly off the table.


Once inside, Eremita moved slightly further, making sure to move out of the way of the entrance before lowering the other girl to the ground. By now she had realized that it was probably the sunlight that had hurt the girls hand, for once her stereotyped knowledge proving true, and found a generally shady spot, with the dappled sunlight that might reach the vampire blocked by Eremita own body. Using her feelers, she gingerly pulled open the bag, not entirely as to shade Violetta while letting her get out on her own accord, just in case she deemed it was still not good enough to get out yet.


“Are you okay now?” She asked gently, her voice still a little concerned.

“Sor-Sorry about that!” Eremita said, putting her hands together and bending her upper body over slightly as if to plead for forgiveness, “My machinery isn’t very well made, so it tends to make a lot of noise! Please forgive me!” She added, attempting to minimize movement needed to reduce noise.


“Eh?” Eremita exclaimed staring at Eli, taking a moment to process the information. ”B-but isn’t time like… Unstoppable? It doesn’t just stop moving because one person wants it to, right?” She asked quickly, moving her hands as she spoke. She didn’t like that idea. Not at all. The idea that someone could stop time and finish her before she could even realize she was in danger scared the cyborg girl. As much as she didn’t want to believe it however, it did line up with what had occurred earlier. If it was just teleportation, how would he have put his jacket on Violetta’s head?


Realizing what was about to happen, Eremita lunged towards the vampire, covering the girls ears, or at least where they should be, with her hands. A loud whistle sounded from the boiler on her back, spewing out a puff of steam. One of her feelers reached up, grabbing a small chain attached to a small hatch on her shell, steam flushing out of the opening, temporarily covering the area in a small cloud. Pulling her hands off of the other girls ears, she reached back slowly with one of her arms. She missed a few times, but she eventually managed to close the opening, allowing her to restore pressure, and energy, to herself.


“I’m So-!’ Eremita started, realizing that if she were to continue panicking the whistle would likely sound again. “I mean, I’m sorry for that happening. It tends to go off when I… When I panic” She continued, her tone much softer then it had been.