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Maria-12 is sitting on the edge of an abandoned building, a seam in the horizon joining the sky and the earth off Venus as it leans precariously over rumbling waters.
She scribbles something down in a notebook, feet kicking out over the waters churning below. She always had a fondness for the basics.
"Hey, Pen, you good to go again?"
Her Ghost floats back down from above her, coming to eye-level, and squints at her.
"As long as you keep doing this, Maria," she says, tiredness in her voice.
Penumbra smiles faintly in reassurance. "Just a few more, I've got a lucky feeling today."
"You've always got a lucky feeling, Maria."
"And it's always paid off!" She stands up, and grins at her Ghost, before facing the hundred-foot plummet in front of her again. "...eventually."
There's the brief sound of a mechanical eye rolling in its shell.
"Yeah." Maria turns on the spot to face Penumbra, and salutes. "See you on the other side."
And she falls backwards. Gracefully at first, before becoming a flailing tangle of limbs and fear and the sound of rushing wind soaring past her and-
There's a really unpleasant crunch as she misses her target and hits the stone hard. She's immediately killed on impact as chunks of sleek metal and circuitry spray out in every direction.
Penumbra winces, having watched the whole affair. And then she starts counting aloud.
A minute passes. "58… 59…"
And instead of a '60', there's a flash of light as her shell spins and expands outward. Maria steps forward out of thin air, her body glowing softly as threads of Light weave her back together.
"Any luck?" Penumbra posits.
Maria-12 sits back down on the edge of the building, picking her pen and paper from where she left it and immediately scribbling something down.
"Almost."
There’s a pause as Penumbra’s shell spins in place, thin threads of Light dissipating into the ozone. She blinks once, twice, before placing herself in between Maria and her notebook.
"You've been at this for six hours, dear. You should rest yourself."
Maria gives her companion a neon smile and a roll of the eyes, before gently pushing her out of the way.
"I'm so close to cracking this wide open, Penumbra. I'm on the verge of a break, I promise. Just a few more runs and we'll call it, yeah?"
"That's not the first time you've said that today," Penumbra retorts, replacing herself in front of Maria. "Besides, that Vex device is going to blow a microfuse or several hundred if you keep hitting the basalt like that."
Maria glances over to the small metallic construct sitting across from here, precariously balanced on the edge of the roof, and grimaces.
"Okay, yeah, point considered. It's a good point. Can't argue with that."
She stands up and dusts off her robes before taking a single stride over to the device, kneeling down in front of it, and giving it a single jab with a stiff finger. It rocks back and forth from the absorbed momentum.
"You think the other Me has better aim?"
"For your sake, Maria, I hope so. As much as I love you, I do not wish to have to reconstruct you from your charred cinders."
Maria turns her head to the Ghost hovering behind her and feigns surprise, hand over her mechanised heart. "Aww, you love me?"
Penumbra sounds strained, but laughs through it. "Maria, please."
With a big grin, she gives her Ghost a wink. "Love you too, Pen."
Maria gets up and dusts her robes off again with both hands. "Okay. Last one, yeah?"
Penumbra pauses. "Yeah. Okay. When you're ready, Maria."
Maria stands up onto the edge of the roof, gives her Ghost one last salute, and-
"Don't do it blind this time, dear."
"Oh. Right."
Maria spins round on the verge of the abyss, churning Venusian waters beneath her. She leans over the edge and sees the rock formations below, cradling the base of the leaning skyscraper. The marks fresh from where her metallic body has been pulled along the sharp stone.
"Yeah. Right." She looks over one shoulder. "See you on the other side."
And she jumps. For a second, glimmers of Light form under her footsteps and she passes through the air with grace, carrying her momentum forward. And then she plummets into a dive.
Her body forms a spear, piercing through the thick smoke and fog, the wind whistling sharp past her ears, the frothing ocean fast approaching.
There's no transition, no identifiable moment where she enters the water. One moment, her world is full of sounds of life and mechanisms and harsh winds and sulphurous fire. The next, she is drowned beneath a sheer roar. It is all-encompassing. She is but a speck in a sea of shadows. An eternity encloses on her, and she can't remember what was outside of it.
A moment stretched out to infinity: a sea of ice. Black sands and blood-stained snow shift beneath her feet. In her dreams, a place she's visited many times before.
For the first time in a thousand lifetimes, she looks up. For the first time, she breathes in.
The Light blinds her when she opens her eyes, a million needles threading her metallic skin and electronic nerves back together, binding that breath inside of her.
Maria answers Penumbra's question before she can even ask it.
"Jupiter."