"Sorry not sorry, bird, you maybe live this way and you can yell at me afterward if it turns out you talk." Drag drag. He's letting it see and hear him now. The cage is on wheels and has a long leashlike thing.

It continues to rattle and bang at the cage, mechanically. No angered sounds, no getting tired. Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang.

Support staff would like to close the looting out in another fifteen minutes between not wanting to overwork people and the risk profile for more kidnappings.

Yup, he'll run in for a few more orbs and stuff and then when Teddy gives the all-clear he's done.

Yep, all clear, nobody found in a nice and thorough scan.

They smash the core and everyone is out.

The kidnapped monster is now sitting perfectly still in a neutral resting pose in its crate.

"Hey bird, you gonna move ever again or are you a statue?" says Haru.

"I am no longer receiving charge. Every motion brings me closer to oblivion."

"...well, maybe the R&D guys can charge you. Do you know what you run on?"

"Lightning. I feel strange."

"Good news, we have that here. I bet they can get you running. What're you gonna want to do with yourself?"

"I want to remain undamaged. I want charge... I want to fly. We could do so much more than dive-strike if only we had more room."

"What do you wanna strike?"

Wings shift slightly, with a metallic rasp. "No, I don't want to strike things! Destroying is easy! And then something is consigned to oblivion! No, creation, preservation is- I-"

The voice's tone suddenly goes neutral. "-Agitated thought requires more charge. Please defer this line of questioning unless I have been granted the boon of a method of charge."

"Okay. Do you know how long you'll last on the charge you have?"

"If I remain motionless and serene, approximately eight thousand times as long as we have been speaking."

That's about four days.

Calculator app to the rescue. "Okay. I'll see about getting you a charge, sit tight."

He calls Paula on his way to find Teddy. "Paula!" he's saying by the time he gets to him. "I caught the bird, thanks for sending the cage by, it talks! It needs electricity, can you rig something up where it can draw charge and we can measure how much without it risking blowing the grid or anything? Thanks, love to hear it. Yeah, have them tote it to the warehouse in the meantime. It holds real still when it's not talking, thinks it has four days on its current charge if it doesn't move."

In the silence and stillness left behind...

"Mori. I name myself thusly."

And then, an approximation of sleep.

Teddy is staring blankly at an after-action report.

He closes it and shuts his eyes when he sees Haru coming, then starts packing up his little crash cart of sensing tools and electronics.

"Ready to get out of here?"

"Yeah, Paula's sending some guys to tote the live'un to a more appropriate location."

"I can sense it now. It sort of - wavered in when the core broke."

"- oh! That's really interesting!"

"I have no idea what kind of implications it has but I took notes on the subjective feeling. I didn't try to talk to it, though. Bit too backlashed for that."

"It needs electricity and it's trying to save on charge till we figure out how to get it some so that's just as well, it'll be there to talk to later with any luck."

He finishes closing up the cart.

"My agent has people put this in storage, we can leave it. I swear dungeons are just making it up as they go along."

Handholding? Handholding.

"Could be interesting, given Cricket. It's a robot?"

"Seems like it. Clockwork critter that needs electricity. A magic robot, I want to say like the one from the Oz books but I don't actually remember if he was supposed to be fully nonmagical, he might have been."