Originally posted on AO3 for the Yuletide 2015 collection.

Continuity Notes: I've only seen the TV series and the first two OVAs, so if anything in this story is contradicted by additional material, my apologies in advance!

Spoilers: Just for the TV series.

# # #

The radio crackled.

"Fleet Commander?"

Ridget thumbed the 'talk' button. "Yes?"

"We've found Ledo … probably."

She raised an eyebrow at Bellows' qualifier. "Probably?"

"About half of his Yunboro's head came off right before it grabbed the other one, shot it, and exploded, according to Amy and the others. I've got someone out retrieving it now; hopefully Ledo will be in there."

"They both exploded?" Ridget supposed that if anything could hurt one of those flying Yunboro, it would be another one.

"That's what it sounds like. It fits with what we saw, too. Do you want me to stick around and see if I can dig anything else up in the morning?"

"You're not properly supplied for a salvage mission right now, are you? Make a note of the location and come on back, unless Ledo feels strongly otherwise."

"Will do. See you soon!"

The radio fell silent, and Ridget leaned back in her seat. She didn't know what they'd encounter when they rendezvoused with the Kugel Fleet, but at least this was one bit of good news.

She suspected they'd need it.

#

"Chamber."

Ledo watched the pair of submersible Yunboros fold a net around his escape module and begin towing it towards – a momentary indulgence in magnification confirmed that that was Bellows' ship. Little things like that – magnification, the viewscreens themselves, basic life support functions – all still functioned independently.

It was only the most important part that was missing.

He bit his tongue on another repetition of the name. If the combined explosion had not been proof enough, certainly Chamber's continued silence ought to be. He resisted, too, the urge to ask 'why'. He'd already received as much of an answer as he was likely to ever get.

Now, after I eliminate the barrier that blocks his path ahead, my mission will be complete.

The Yunboros reached the side of the ship and hauled him up, setting him down with entirely unnecessary care – the inertial dampeners on the pod could handle far more than that – towards the fore of the ship.

It began a slow turn; headed back to the fleet, no doubt. He turned as far as he could to watch behind, where the explosion had been, until long after the bulk of the ship made it impossible.

He kept watching anyway, his mind a mess of 'what nows' to which he had no answer (and no one to ask), until a very familiar silhouette appeared from within the ship and dashed over to knock on the front of his pod.

He unlatched himself, released the hatch, and Amy tumbled in.

"Ledo!"

He fell back, head narrowly missing striking his chair, Amy a solid, reassuring weight. Grace chirped in his ear.

"Amy." He tentatively closed his arms around her, fingers resting lightly on the soft cloth of her shirt. She clung tighter for a moment, then pushed away, settling back on her heels and launching into a stream of words.

Ledo's arms felt strangely empty.

He automatically glanced to his lower left, even as his ears picked 'Bellows' and 'fight' and 'worried' (several times over) out of the flood of tantalizingly familiar-sounding syllables.

But of course Chamber had been the one translating, too.

"Amy," he repeated, raising his hands. "Please speak … slowly."

She stopped. "But doesn't –" her gaze also fell on the now-blank space beside his head.

"Chamber translated for me," he said.

"What happened to Chamber?" she asked, slowly enough that Ledo could follow this time. "He was fighting that other flying Yunboro, and then there was this huge –" a word he didn't know, but from the accompanying gesture, Ledo guessed it meant 'explosion' "— but he's not gone, right?"

There's no place for us on this world that's been reborn.

Ledo stood and touched the comm briefly, then removed it and tucked it into his pocket. He offered Amy a hand up, too. "I do not know. But probably, yes."

#

Ledo and Amy watched from the deck as Bellows' ship re-docked with Gargantia. Ridget stood near the dock, her form indistinct in the persistent fog of the Sea of Mist. They must be close, then.

She approached as they disembarked, Bellows just behind them, and inclined her head. "Ledo. I hear reports that you joined the Kugel Fleet, but also that you played a key part in the rebellion. Our thanks for your support."

He shook his head. "It was the right thing. To ... make up for family shame."

Amy tilted her head. "I thought you didn't have family?"

Ledo nodded. "But Kugel was my," he paused, trying to come up with a word he knew. "My Fleet Commander. Of a very small fleet. We supported each other. I think it was … like family? And what he did – trying to make here like" he fell back on his own words for the Galactic Alliance, wishing he remembered what Chamber had said"– it was wrong."

"I am glad you think so," Ridget said. She held out a thick envelope. "Amy – if you could run this over to Flange?"

"They're rejoining the fleet, right?" Amy asked, glancing from her to Ledo and back. "And the Kugel Fleet, we're not going to just abandon them, are we?"

Ridget smiled slightly. "Negotiations are still in progress."

Amy stepped forward and took the packet, then stopped and looked back at Ledo. "You'll stay too, right?"

I wanted to meet her one more time …

The words caught in Ledo's throat.

Bellows laughed. "I doubt spaceboy is going anywhere any time soon." She made a gesture that Ledo thought meant 'go'. "I'll make sure he's here when you get back."

"Thanks!" Amy dashed off.

Ledo watched her leave, dragging his attention back to Ridget only after she disappeared into the fog.

Her small smile faded. "Gargantia will not allow" a string of syllables he didn't quite recognize "of the whalesquid. If you cannot abide by that –"

Ledo's stomach roiled, remembering. "I will not … kill whalesquid anymore."

They may have taken a different evolutionary path, but they were still people. He knew that, now.

Ridget nodded crisply. "Good. Then you are welcome to return." Another slight smile. "You may find that Amy was not the only one who missed you. Now. About your Yunboro –"

"Chamber and Striker are … broken. They … exploded." He hoped he'd remembered the correct pronunciation.

"Can Chamber be fixed?"

"I do not know. It depends on –" he struggled for a moment, settled on, "—how he is broken."

"Hmm. And this is whalesquid territory."

"At least, it was," Bellows added. Her mouth twisted. "I'm guessing – Striker? – took care of any you left behind, given the Kugel fleet's taste in decorations."

Ledo remembered the whalesquid corpses speared on pikes and shuddered.

He didn't think Chamber had left any behind.

"Speaking of the Kugel fleet, I need to get back to work," Ridget said. "Bellows?"

She shrugged fluidly. "Figured I'd head back over there. See whether I can help sort things out." She sent Ledo a challenging look. "Chamber isn't going to rust, is he?" Ledo shook his head. "Then even if he is fixable, our efforts are better spent here. For now."

Chamber …

But his desires did not outweigh the livelihood of everyone else. Not in the Galactic Alliance, and … he thought not here, either. So he nodded. "If there is work I can do to … support others …"

Bellows blinked, then put a hand on her hip and grinned. "I'm sure we can find something for you to do. Come with me, spaceboy."

Ledo went.

#

The first day, Ledo followed Bellows around, trying not to get in her way.

The second day, the announcement of both the Flange and Kugel fleet into Gargantia was announced, and he found himself volunteered to help with all the little administrative tasks involved in such a merger. The Flange fleet mostly just took up its previous positions as though they'd never left, but the members of the Kugel fleet had been under Striker's reign for so long that many of them did not trust this new regime.

At first, Ledo walked the falling-apart areas to which Striker had relegated those of "little value", to make sure they knew about the merge, and tell them where to go if they had any concerns. But all except one of the doors he knocked stayed firmly shut.

In that case, a small child had opened the door and looked up at Ledo, and asked if he was also an emissary from the sky god. Asked him not to bless their mother yet, please, they were sure she'd be able to work again soon.

He had – he couldn't even remember what he'd said, or how he'd left, just that next he knew, he was standing in a narrow alley, staring at a handful of discarded boxes and other detritus, and failing to see anything but a long line of white-clad bodies, sliding into the ocean.

When he'd haltingly explained, the administrator in charge had quickly reassigned him to stay at the border, screening petitioners. His grasp of the language was still uncertain, but with a form to fill out for each petitioner, a set list of questions to ask, a list of answers to common questions, and instructions on who to send petitioners with more difficult problems to, it was within his capabilities.

The hardest part was refreshing his memory of the Gargantian alphabet, learned slowly and piecemeal from signs and posters. And dealing with the stares, and the scared looks. His line was often far shorter than those of the other volunteers.

But perhaps there was something about holding a clipboard in his hand that made him appear less like an emissary from a god, because at least a few people were willing to try.

"It feels like I am not doing enough," he confessed to Amy one night, as they sat on top of the hangar and stared out into the fog. These moments were much rarer than before – everything.

At their face, Grace and the other – he had no word for it, so he used the Earth word, chenernho – cautiously sniffed at each other, chittering in their own strange tongue. He didn't know where the second one had been before it found him, but it appeared to have decided to stay.

"That's not true at all!" The words tumbled from Amy's mouth. "What you're doing right now – it's really important. I wish I could help, too, but I'm always so busy …"

She sighed. Ledo watched her face, wondering whether he should say anything. "You said, before, being a messenger means taking information and packages to people who need them." He'd been reading the translation at the time, so the words were harder, now. "So that they can do their jobs and support everyone else. That is very important."

She smiled up at him. "I did say that, didn't I? … But that's why what you're doing is so important, too. It might not seem like much, but without it, the people from the Kugel fleet won't have anywhere to go, or anyone to take their problems to, or they might end up forgotten." Ledo thought of that tiny, litter-strewn alley.

Supporting people who didn't already have the support. "Helping them to join the family?"

Amy blinked, then nodded. "Helping Gargantia's family grow larger," she agreed.

Like he himself had been helped. But …

"Chamber said he expected great … things, from my life. I – as a soldier, I knew what that meant. But I don't know what it means anymore."

Ledo looked upwards, but the fog hid the stars. He didn't think Chamber had meant as a soldier. He had said he was no longer fit for military duty, after all.

Amy was silent, but when he looked over, she was frowning thoughtfully.

Grace chittered and pounced on the other chenernho. They bounced away, and Ledo watched them go.

"I don't know either," Amy finally said quietly. Slowly. "But I think … My parents, they used to – this is so embarrassing – they called me their little light bug. They said it was because I shone as brightly as the Milky Way."

Ledo thought that was a fair comparison.

She uncurled, stretching her legs out in front of her and staring at her toes as she idly waved them back and forth.

"They'd always tell me that I could do anything. I was worried, when I told them that I wanted to become a messenger. Because it's … yes, it's important, but it's not grand, you know? If we're doing our jobs right, people don't really notice. But … my mother – um, that's a female parent – she said that the most important thing was that you were satisfied with your work; that you were happy with it."

She looked back up at him. "I think maybe that's what Chamber meant, too. That you should do what makes you happy."

While Ledo considered this, she pulled her legs back in and wrapped her arms around her knees. "I've tried to do the same with Bebel, since he doesn't … really remember them, anymore. But I don't know …"

"I think you are a very good parent," Ledo said.

Apparently this was the wrong thing to say; Amy blushed brightly. "I'm not –! Um, Ledo, what do you think a parent is?"

"An adult of close blood-relation who is responsible for a child, correct? Like 'sister' and 'brother'."

"Um, it is," she said, blushing brighter. "But it's not just any adult. I mean, it can be, if the child is adopted. Um, that means that they're not related by blood. But most of the time, the parents are … they're where the child comes from."

Ledo tried to think back to his own childhood, but the younger children – they'd always just appeared, sometimes, at what he thought now was around two years old. Gargantia was the first time he'd seen children any younger. So this must be another way in which the Galactic Alliance and Earth differed. "Where do –"

"Anyway!" Amy interrupted. "I'm taking care of Bebel, but I'm still just his sister."

Maybe if Chamber was here, he would be able to help Ledo understand. "Then you are a very good sister," he said.

"… I hope so." She smiled up at him. "So what do you want to do?"

"I want to work. To help support everyone else."

Amy nodded. "But there are a lot of different ways you can do that. They probably won't need volunteers to help with integrating the new people from the Kugel fleet for that much longer, but you could ask if they have any openings for doing that sort of thing all the time, if you like it."

Ledo made a face.

Amy laughed. "You could see if they need new mechanics now. Or become a messenger, like me. Or a fisherman – our fleet is a lot larger, now. Or help with the cleanup and repairs, they need a lot of people for that, too."

"I would … like to help with repairs," he said. To rebuild what he had helped destroy – that felt right, somehow. "But I do not know how to use a Yunboro." They were still needed to lift much of the heavy debris. And … "I would like to know how to use a Yunboro."

They were not Chamber. They were not even all that much like Chamber. But perhaps they would help him feel a little bit less like he was trapped within his fragile human body.

"Then you should learn," Amy said. "I'm sure you can find someone to teach you. And even after the repairs are over, there are plenty of things that Yunboro are useful for."

"I would like to salvage again," he said, remembering that thrill of discovery.

– Before the whalesquid had come and he had ruined everything.

Maybe he could learn more about the whalesquid, too.

"Then you should. Bellows would probably be happy to let you rejoin her crew." Amy hesitated. "If you don't –"

"I won't kill any more whalesquid," Ledo repeated his earlier vow. "… But without Chamber, I cannot swim."

Perhaps if he started salvaging again, he could salvage Chamber, too.

Amy smiled. She stood, and offered Ledo a hand up. "I can help with that."

#

One of the men Ledo worked with had a brother who was currently helping clear wreckage. The brother talked to his boss, who didn't have any Yunboro to spare, but knew of another group who might –

Ledo followed the chain of helpful suggestions and wondered how everyone knew everyone else, when he could barely remember the faces of more than a handful of his classmates.

Finally, he met with an older woman who ruled her handful of Yunboros with a stern, no-nonsense attitude. She didn't have any to spare during the day – her one spare had been substituted in because another needed repairs to an arm – but if he'd be willing to come by in the evenings, she'd show him the basics.

He came every night for a week, practicing until his sight blurred, and fell back into his pod exhausted at the end of each day.

For that week, all he saw of Amy was glimpses in passing, and half of those watching her glide by above.

The repairs on the extra Yunboro finished, and the older woman – his boss, now – eyed him critically and said that she figured he probably wouldn't damage it any worse than it already had been.

The people he had been working with expressed sorrow at his departure, and gratitude for all he had done thus far. He was not sure what to do with either, but thanking them in return – the words far less difficult to produce they had been only weeks before, with all the practice speaking he'd been given – seemed to be enough.

Evenings with Amy were now doubly precious, since he'd been reminded what it was like to not have them.

#

One night, their conversation run dry, Amy took him by the hand, and led him to a small pool buried deep in one of the agricultural sections of Gargantia. (Thankfully, he could neither see nor smell any cows.)

Watching Amy swim was almost as mesmerizing as watching her dance.

But she laughed, and pulled him into the pool, and showed him how to move his arms and legs. It was awkward, at first, far more awkward than the Yunboro. But with Amy's presence, her warm laughter and gentle corrections, he slowly improved.

Unlike the dance, this they could do together.

#

Another week passed. A month.

He slowly grew more adept at controlling the light Yunboro Rivet – his boss – had leant him, though it still felt hopelessly slow and unresponsive.

One of the people he worked with became infected with an endemic disease, although the others assured him that it would not be fatal, as Kugel's had been. This 'cold' was apparently quite common. He'd caught himself on the verge of asking if it would be possible to acquire a sample so that he could have Chamber analyze it.

While she was sick, the others had let him use her Yunboro, a larger one. He could clear more rubble this way, or haul materials for repairing the ships that had been damaged not entirely destroyed.

And eventually, tired of his hesitation, Amy dropped by during lunch break and dragged him along with her to deliver a message to Bellows. Her team was currently working with Pinion to recover what artifacts hadn't been destroyed by Heaven's Tower's strikes – or so Amy said. She seemed to know everything happening on Gargantia.

"Settling in, Ledo?" Bellows asked, as she finished signing for the packet Amy had brought. "I hear you joined Rivet's crew?"

"Yes. We are working on cleanup and repairs."

"Aren't we all." She swept her bangs back from her head. "Well? Did you have something for me, too?"

Even bolstered by Amy's encouraging smile, Ledo hesitated. "I would like to work on salvage again. After cleaning up."

"If you're worried about losing your job, there's always something in need of clearing, a ship this size. Rivet's crew keeps themselves busy," Bellows said. "It's steadier work than salvage, to be honest."

Ledo remembered Chamber saying Explore, and that was part of it. But also, "I like salvage," he said. "I like learning about Earth. I want to learn more."

"Hah. Can't argue with that." She pinned him with an evaluating stare, like one of his instructors, years and a galaxy away. "You pick up any experience with submersible Yunboros yet?"

Ledo shook his head. "But I can swim, now."

"Oh, can you?" Bellows smirked in Amy's direction. She blushed. "I'll go chat with Rivet, see if we can work out a trial period. In the meantime, isn't your lunch break almost over?"

"Yes," Ledo said. "I should be going." And, because he thought it was the appropriate way to express the warmth in his chest, "Thank you."

"Hah. Don't thank me yet!"

#

Nearly two months after their encounter with the Kugel fleet, the majority of the repairs and re-integration of the fleet – both ships and people – finally concluded. After consultation with the other shipmasters, Ridget sent out the order to get the fleet underway once more.

After talking to Bellows, and her subsequent conversation with Rivet, Ledo had spent two days a week with the salvage crew, learning how to pilot the submersible Yunboros, and the rest with Rivet's crew.

This past week, with most of the immediate cleanup done, and the salvage of Pinion's artifacts nearly complete as well, he'd joined the fishermen, who kept having to move further and further afield to find enough fish to feed the entire fleet.

In the rush of preparation to leave, Ledo sought out Bellows again.

"It'll be a little while before our next big operation," she told him. "While we're on standby, you might want to talk to Pinion, see if you can help him figure out whether any of the artifacts we pulled up are actually useful. Or just keep working with Rivet."

"I will do that," Ledo said, although the bits and pieces of lost Earth technology were often nearly as foreign to him as Chamber had been to Gargantia. "I have a request."

Bellows leaned back in her chair. "Go for it."

"I would like to … salvage Chamber."

It might be his last chance – he had no idea when Gargantia would pass this way again, or even if it would. And even knowing he would not find anything – the silence of the communicator at his side a constant reminder – he still wanted to know.

"I believe I have – ah, here it is." She pulled out a map and laid it over the other papers on her desk. "The coordinates where we picked you up aren't far from Gargantia's planned path. Here. Couple-day trip, we rejoin Gargantia … here." She looked at his face and laughed. "I thought you might want to. And I have to admit, I'm pretty curious myself."

"Thank you," Ledo said again.

#

After nearly a month of practice, Ledo no longer jumped at every creak and clank in his Yunboro as he followed Bellows cautiously through the murky water. The controls still were not second nature, but he no longer had to consciously consider each motion.

"We only have an approximate location for the explosion, but given your and Amy's accounts, we're fairly certain that it occurred somewhere around here," Bellows said, her voice a bit tinny over the radio. "Let's fan out and search – but stay in sight!"

"I will," Ledo responded. He smoothly turned the Yunboro, the now-familiar thrum of the engines at his back. His headlamps illuminated pale and dark sand forming swirls and wavy patterns across the ocean floor, interrupted by bits of scrub here and there. Occasionally a handful of fish would flash by.

Perhaps an hour had passed, as he alternately watched the ocean floor, the dimly visible headlamps of Bellows' Yunboro, and the occasional fish, when Bellows' exclamation sputtered from the radio. "I think I found something!"

In his excitement, Ledo turned too quickly and almost overbalanced sideways; he forced himself to remain calm as he corrected for the tilt and headed towards her. He slowed to a stop near her.

"What do you think?"

He reached down and picked the artifact up in one awkward claw. It looked like one of the triangular armor plates from Chamber's arm – he thought. The darker half looked more black than purple. "You are right."

Hopefully, the rest of Chamber would be around here somewhere, too.

They separated again, and it wasn't long before both he and Bellows began to discover more fragments.

"Purple?" Bellows asked at one point.

Ledo rotated to look. "That is probably Striker's foot."

"Huh. Hadn't realized they came in different colors. I'm collecting these, too."

"Okay."

Ledo had no wish to retain any part of Striker – but he would not prevent Bellows from using her fragments to help support Gargantia.

(He liked to think that Commander Kugel would have approved, before. If only he had had a chance to talk to the Commander himself, instead of just Striker's hollow puppet.)

As the daylight above began to dim, Ledo finally found it: Chamber's core, where his core computing resources and power source resided. This, he picked up most gently of all. The white part of his chest plate was now barely distinguishable from the black; his shoulders were mostly intact but his arms ended almost immediately below, and there was no sign of the primary laser on his abdomen or anything but fragments of his legs.

His core looked intact, but through the clouded glass of the viewports and the even cloudier water, it was difficult to tell for sure.

"We should head back," Bellows said. "I'm sorry we weren't able to find more than fragments. Perhaps we can at least give him a proper send-off."

"Is that not only for humans?" Ledo asked. Despite the Gargantian tendency to call Chamber a Yunboro, he'd seen no sign that theirs were anything other than simple, un-intelligent machines.

"Well, usually, but …" Bellows' side of the radio fell briefly silent. "Chamber was a person too, wasn't he? Even if he wasn't quite like us. And he sacrificed himself on our behalf."

My mission will be complete.

"Chamber was a machine. A –" he paused, unsure how to translate Pilot Support Enlightenment Interface System. "—a machine built to help its pilot make correct decisions, and aid him in accomplishing his goals. Is that a person?" Perhaps this was another place where the meanings in Earth language differed from his own.

"I don't see why it can't be," Bellows said. "Ideally, people try to do that for each other, too."

Had Ledo ever helped Chamber? Had he had goals, aside from supporting Ledo? He never would have thought so – he hadn't thought they'd been programmed to be capable of it – but then, he never would have expected a Machine Caliber to declare herself a god, either.

Perhaps, if he could get Chamber running again, he would ask.

He hoped there would be no need for a send-off.

"Let's head back," Bellows repeated, and turned, dragging her net of scraps behind her.

Ledo followed.

#

"Ledo! What are you doing?"

Ledo smiled up at Amy as she leaned against the railing on the catwalk above, Grace on her shoulder. "I'm fixing Chamber."

"Really?"

She dashed over to where a group of layered shelves stood and launched herself over the railing, bouncing down each in succession like a series of very large stairs. She skidded to a stop next to him, staring at the mess of components and wires that Ledo had uncovered from the top of Chamber's core. "Are you going to fix the rest of him, too? How far are you? Can I help?"

"I do not have enough of the rest of him to properly fix him," Ledo said. He had a partial arm that he might be able to re-affix, but most of the other fragments were too broken, and there were too many parts missing, to do much more than that. "But I am hoping to at least bring him back –" he paused. Did Earth have a word for 'online'? "Awake."

As far as he could tell, the power core was undamaged, so Chamber's neural network should still be intact. However, he assumed that Chamber had followed standard procedure and put himself on standby.

The first problem, then, was figuring out how to communicate. Simple proximity hadn't done it – his communicator remained still and silent – and the communications array in his cockpit had all been wired in directly, to connections that had been blown away along with everything else.

So it would have to be something simple: radio, or a text interface of some sort, though he couldn't remember having seen any of the latter.

At least he could concentrate on this – Bellows had said that even now that they were moving again, seeking out another Milky Way took priority over finding new salvage sites; it was only thanks to the Kugel fleet's more powerful generators that they were not desperately low on energy.

He could have worked with Pinion, or returned to Rivet – but he had enough money to not work for a few days. And this was important.

"Ledo?"

"Sorry. I am trying to figure out how to let Chamber speak." He smiled wryly at her. "You are welcome to help, but I do not know what to ask of you. I am not sure what to do, either."

Amy folded her arms, tucking them under her red covering. "Why can't he speak anymore? Wasn't the speaker in his head?"

"The connection is missing," Ledo said.

"Oh, it needs to be wired?" She frowned at the mess of wires. "And you probably couldn't just use a telephone wire, could you."

Ledo shook his head.

Amy brightened. "I'll ask Pinion. He's got a whole mess of wires, and all those ancient artifacts. Maybe one of them will work!"

She dashed away again.

Ledo had dismissed a few more wires as unrelated, and cleared some detritus, but otherwise made no real progress, by the time Amy returned with an eager Pinion in tow and a whole mess of wires and connectors in both of their arms.

"Amy said you needed help with the tin can?" Pinion asked. "That's all that's left? Whoa. Now just let me –" he set his mess on the ground and dug a tablet-shaped object out, then turned it towards Chamber. "Whoa. Okay. Let's see, communication first? That's here, right?"

"I think so."

With what Ledo could recall of the basic engineering training he'd been given – never meant for repairs of this complexity – Pinion's curiosity and the helpful insights of the tablet he said had been a gift from Striker and recovered during the repairs, and Amy's occasional common sense suggestions, experience with keeping Pinion on track, and skill at clambering all over and around Chamber's core, they slowly cobbled together something that they thought might work.

"Pinion! So this is where you've been hiding!"

All three of them looked up at Mayta's exasperated shout. One of Pinion's repair crew, she leaned over from the top catwalk to shout down at them. "We've got work to do, stop slacking!"

"I'm not slacking!" he shouted back. "C'mon, Ledo, back me up here."

Ledo blinked up at him from where he knelt, slotting into place what they hoped would be the last of a truly impressive series of wires, connectors, adapters, and 'it fits if we wedge it in, maybe it'll work'. "Can you not back up yourself? I am not in your way, am I?"

Amy leapt down. "It's a colloquial term. It means to support someone's argument. Just a minute, Mayta!" She knelt before the telephone they'd decided to use as the endpoint, picked up the handset, and dialed some random numbers. "Hello, Chamber? Can you hear me?"

"Wait! We haven't tested –"

A loud tone emitted from the phone's speaker. Ledo held his breath. Would it be enough? It hardly seemed possible, and yet –

The tone shifted higher in pitch, then lower. Stopped, started again. Pulses.

"What's going on?" Mayta asked, but none of them were listening.

"A – A – Amy?" The stuttering voice did not sound like the Chamber knew, not emitting from that tiny speaker. He leaned closer.

"Chamber! You're awake!"

"Amy." Steadier now. "Query: Where is Ensign Ledo?"

Ledo leaned in. "I'm here, Chamber." He had to clear his throat, before he used one of the many phrases that Amy had taught him, which were unique to Gargantia. To Earth. "Welcome home."

#

"Query: why have I been awakened?"

Mayta had long since dragged Pinion away, but Amy had stayed.

Ledo hesitated.

"Because you're our friend, of course," Amy said.

"Negation: I am a Pilot Support Enlightenment Interface System." Ah – those were the words he should have used. "My role is to support my pilot. Query: how can I support my pilot in this state?"

"I would never have made it this far without your advice," Ledo said. He tried to align the words in his head in Earth language, then gave up and fell back on his own. "I cannot repair you fully, but given that we have successfully restored communication, I believe it will also be possible to attach your core to a Yunboro, to return to you some sensation and functionality." He'd need to acquire one somehow – perhaps if he did not have enough money to buy one, he would be allowed to go into 'debt', another money-related concept of which he'd recently become aware.

Amy frowned, concentrating, as he spoke, but her eyes lit up when she recognized the word 'Yunboro'. "Are we going to give Chamber another body? Can I help with that, too?"

"Yes," Ledo said.

"Query: why is this necessary?"

Ledo smiled at Amy. "I agree with Amy. It is because you are our friend."

"Ensign Ledo."

"I am not an Ensign anymore," Ledo said. "You said so yourself, did you not? I am no longer your pilot."

A long pause. Far longer than the regulation-length pause that Machine Calibers used to make their speech patterns sound more human.

"If I have no pilot, then what is my purpose?" Chamber asked.

Ledo stared at the phone, remembering another conversation – remembering many other conversations. "Remember, I told you that I knew how to die, but not how to live." He looked towards Amy and held out his hand. "But that there were people who had done their best to support me. To help me find a way to live."

She smiled shyly, and took it, her grip tight and warm.

"Friends support each other. Let us support you, as you have supported me. Let us help you discover a new purpose."

Another abnormally long pause.

"Friends. I would … like to be your friend. Ledo. Amy."

Amy cheered and hugged Chamber's core.

Ledo smiled. "You already are."