The golden soldier of the System Collective flashed his identification card to the webline clerk. She fidgeted at first (she must have been new), and called her superior, who let Weaver through immediately, apologizing the whole time. If this was what being a part of the GCP was about, it was something he could get used to quickly.

The scuttler arrived on schedule. She dismounted the Linerunner and helped elderly Junovians from some other places further up the webline.

Planetside time was a bit faster than moonside, but Weaver accounted for this. What he didn't account for was the human skeleton in the broken exosuit to start shooting in the middle of town. Weaver clutched at his side with one of his arms, wincing at the pain. Lucky shot.

Prisma caught up to him just as he was climbing the back of the Linerunner, and he helped her up. They took their seats toward the oversized creature's abdomen, nestling themselves in beneath the layers of its carapace.

Another moment later, and the commander barked an order, and the Linerunner started running.

The weblines had connection points all throughout the supernest. Some led to offices, where the emissaries and royalty discussed the policies of the Parthan System in relation to their local star systems, others went to solar energy plants, where workers harvested energy from the light side of the moon to supply power to the dark side. Weaver's destination, however, was none of these mundane places. He was headed to the warp gate.

"My queen," Weaver spoke with an exaggerated planetside accent, "I apologize for our humble means of transportation. Do allow me to make up for my failure to properly accommodate you."

Prisma shifted in her seat, "Who was that?"

"Who was who?" Weaver mirrored, feigning ignorance.

"The lifeform," Prisma specified, "The one who attacked us. Is it a bounty hunter or something?"

"I'm not sure." Weaver admitted, clattering his mandibles slowly. He could feel his disappointment welling in his thorax.

"Are those the types of lifeforms you'll have to... pacify?"

"I'm not sure," Weaver began, turning his gaze forward, toward the scuttler's back, "It's likely."

Prisma shuffled in her seat again, mandibles gnashing together with droplets of silk leaking from them. She put her two hands closest to Weaver on his leg. Weaver, startled, looked down, then met Prisma's gaze. Her mandibles were covered in silk and viscous, clear fluid while her shoulders and abdomen ungulated irregularly.

Silently, Weaver took her hands in his own, clicking rhythmically with his second set of mandibles.

Minutes of this passed as the Linerunner stopped at different stations in the supernest. Passengers, whether native Junovian or otherwise, came and left in the infinite time Weaver comforted Prisma. He didn't pay them any mind.

The Linerunner stopped after an age, and the weblines passengers were bathed in a deeply saturated blue. Beyond the station, at the epicenter of a hundred smaller nests and embassies, stood the moon's commercial warp gate.

It was a goliath that rivaled the tallest points of the supernest. One hundred and fifty meters of pure, alien metal and alloy, oppressive with its brutal, sharpened edges and ten thousand blinking lights. The white alloy that made up the exterior layer of the warp gate was a vile, disgusting thing. Rigid, unmoving, impenetrable, unlike anything else on the moon, which ebbed and flowed with the passing methane breeze and super storms.

As the pair of Junovians disembarked from the webline, Weaver gave thanks to the scuttler, who in turn smiled with her second set of mandibles. Prisma clutched both of Weaver's right hands. Firm. She dragged her feet as they walked toward the warp gate, and Weaver had to slow his pace down to match.

The security checkpoint that surrounded the gate was a series of three concentric rings, industry standard in all System Collective controlled worlds as far as Weaver understood. The first ring ring was designed to record and register lifeforms. It held the registry of everyone and everything that came or left through the warp gate, including a lifeform's designation and previous warp location.

Weaver flashed his GCP credentials to the security agent, a tall, wall of a lifeform with a stone cold visage and glowing, orange eyes. An Artosian, if memory serves.

"Credentials." The Artosian agent held out it's plated, gravely hand to Prisma.

"She's with me," Weaver said, holding out his GCP credentials for the second time.

The Artosian agent turned their attention to Weaver. Withdrawing their hand, they pulled out a datapad instead. After inputting a few commands, they held it out to Weaver, "Credits, then."

Weaver pulled out his own datapad and transferred three hundred units. The agent took the datapad back and continued with their work, asking, "Reason for warping?"

Prisma looked at him, wordlessly. Weaver flashed her a smile, "SysCo asked for me."

The agent grunted, "Destination?"

"Yadeli Prime."

"Any weaponry, luggage, or metamaterials on your person?"

"Nope, unless you count my charming good looks, right Pris?"

Prisma looked away, and let go of his hands. The Artosian flicked their eyes her way briefly, then back to Weaver. They let out a short, gruff noise from somewhere in their... abdomen? He wasn't quite sure how Artosian biology was labeled, or what the agent was doing. He guessed a sigh, but on the optimistic side of things, they may have laughed.

"Next!" The agent shouted, ushering Weaver and Prisma through.

The second of the rings was a few meters from the first, and to get there one had to traverse through a needlessly complex maze of holographic, electrified walls. Weaver supposed the intent was to stop any terrorist attacks within security itself, but in reality all the micromaze did was slow down security's processing speed.

"Sorry about that," Weaver spoke quietly. Even he adhered to social pressures, sometimes, "You okay, Prisma?"

"I don't want you to go." She said, "If you got hurt..."

Weaver put his arms around her, "Aw, you do care. The queen mother's got an exposed exoskeleton after all."

Prisma pushed him off, nearly shoving him into the electric hologram. Weaver inhaled sharply, then exhaled.

The lifeforms that we're walking behind them stopped and turned to talk amongst themselves, feigning ignorance. Perhaps they wanted to give them space, or maybe they were gossiping about what was unfolding in front of them. Either way, Weaver kept his voice low.

"What is your problem, Pris?"

"You," Prisma shouted. The lifeforms chattering stopped, "You're going into the GCP, you get to travel the entire galaxy and I'm going to be stuck here, alone! I probably won't even be able to talk to you unless you violate their rules, and then if they find out you'll be expelled or spaghettified in a black hole or whatever they do to dissenters, or they'll send the Reaper after you and—"

"Woah, hold on. No one said anything about dissent. I love SysCo."

Prisma jabbed him, "Then you wouldn't be using your power to impress me. You know who I am to them? No one! Just some Junovian scholar, some queen mother one day. You're throwing your life away for nothing."

Weaver stared at her, "You are not nothing, Pris, not to me."

"Then stop doing this weird, methane-brained hatchling nonsense to win me over and stay. Just... stay. You got lucky fighting that other lifeform. Lucky. Luck runs out."

The Junovians looked into each other's eyes for an age. The lifeforms that were behind them worked up the courage to shuffle passed them, trying not to make their curiosity obvious. They had places to be, after all.

Weaver scratched the back of his head, "You could come with me."

"I have responsibilities, Weaver. I can't just go galavanting on SysCo murder adventures like you."

"Then why are you coming through security with me?"

"Because," she paused, "This might be the last time I see you."

She took all four of his hands in hers, and then pulled him into an embrace. Weaver wrapped his arms around her, stroking the top of her head with his primary mandibles, making clicking noises with his secondary set. They stayed like this, for a time, letting lifeforms pass them by. They continued to the second ring.

The second of the security rings was constructed to identify the lifeforms that passed through them. A lifeform's criminal record, economic status, and faction association were all checked here. A list of the most dangerous or criminally talented lifeforms was on full display on every monitor at the second ring, so that one could keep track of any lifeforms or destinations they needed to avoid. This wealth of information was intended for the System Collective to keep track of dissenters and quell any uprisings before they could happen by keeping the nefarious lifeforms isolated. Unfortunately, this had the added benefit of making it easier for those very lifeforms to find one another, and then come up with ways to get around those very security measures if they could steal a starskipper with a warp or grav drive.

The pair of Junovians had a clean record, however, so they moved through the second ring with relative ease.

The third security ring was where various dampening drugs were administered to lifeforms that passed through the gate. A holoscan was performed by the attending agent, which observed and identified any foreign or otherwise unnatural technological installations on one's body. Should any of those be found, different levels of synaptic dampeners would be administered, as well as pacifying agents for the lifeforms that didn't have a clean background check.

Weaver held out his hand to the attending security agent, another Artosian. The agent, a little rougher than necessary perhaps, grabbed Weaver's hand and turned it over, examining the Sigil of the Damned with a conspicuous eye.

"High Chancellor Waylon marked me himself," Weaver lied, "SysCo approved."

The agent nodded, then withdrew a small vial from a nearby cabinet. The vial was transparent, demarcated by a yellow band around the opening. The agent withdrew a syringe and extracted the purple fluid from inside before sliding the point in between Weaver's exoskeleton.

The synaptic dampener took effect immediately. It wasn't a particularly heavy one, not one that would have incapacitated him physically or mentally, but he try to activate his Sigil of the Damned. When he found that he couldn't, he looked at Prisma and shrugged.

"No powers," Weaver explained, "Messes with spacetime or something."

Passing through the final security checkpoint, the pair of Junovians arrived at the warp gate proper. The thing was even more massive up close, and the blue hue that bathed the immediate area made it impossible to determine what anything's true color was. Surrounding the warp gate were several shops run by System Collective representatives, selling different travel wares or food. Nothing that he would need on Yadeli Prime, where the System Collective would take care of him.

"Guess this is the end of the road, huh, Pris?"

Prisma looked down at her feet, "Yeah."

"You gonna wait here while I..." He tilted his head in the direction of the warp gate, where a small group of security agents was starting to gather.

"Yeah."

Weaver pulled her into an embrace, and she embraced him back, tightly. He fought with her to pull away, and held her at arms length. He smiled and clattered his mandibles.

"Pick a good queensguard for me? I'll be back to make sure they aren't disappointing you soon."

Prisma laughed, "You're such a hatchling." Then her mandibles started to leak silk.

Before Weaver could say something in his defense, though, the warp gate shifted from its blue to a deep red. He spun on his heels. The crowd of security agents was knocked back by some force, something he couldn't see. Lifeforms around the gate and even at the third security ring screamed, and an alarm blared.

As the security agents recovered, they backed away from whatever it was that knocked them down, slowly. Weaver could see them raise their weapons, and an artificial intelligence spoke plainly over the speakers.

"ATTENTION LIFEFORMS. JAHIL GATE IS CLOSED. PARHIL GATE IS CLOSED. EXALON GATE IS CLOSED. GANYMEDE GATE IS CLOSED. ARCHON GATE IS CLOSED. RETHOR GATE IS CLOSED. THE PARTHAN SYSTEM IS IN QUARENTINE EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY. PLEASE RETURN TO YOUR DWELLINGS."

The announcement played on repeat, harmonizing with the ever growing screaming. One of the security agents, a lifeform Weaver couldn't place in the chaos, rocketed passed him and Prisma. He ducked out of the way, dragging Prisma to the ground with him. He tried to get a better look at the warp gate, to access the situation.

He had no powers, not for the next few hours, so a direct confrontation was out of the question. There were too many civilians to snag one of the security agents' weapons and take a more violent approach.

Most curious of all though, was the human being with purple hair armed with a repulsion cannon, firing at anyone who came near her.