Hargeon Town
The sun’s light shines upon Hargeon town and a new day begins. Michael wakes up to the sound of knocking on his door. It must be Giselle, and she did not want to be kept waking. He turns his head to look at the clock on the nightstand. It was already almost noon, odd that he usually wakes up at a most reasonable hour. Regardless of the circumstances, he has to answer the door, for he didn’t want Giselle to be kept waiting. His head already hurts as much and he didn’t want to listen to her rant about how he’s waking up late.
He opens the door to find Giselle, though with a more concerned look. “Oh! Michael. You’re finally awake. I just uh… I wanted to check up on your armor.” She says. Odd. She usually gives him a sermon about waking up very late, and this time she looks very concerned. “Sure. Come in.” He says as he invites her into his room. With a snap of his fingers, he called out and summoned his armor from the Cyberspace, each piece laid gently on the floor.
The armor was, in more ways than one, a little broken with evidence of wear and tear in it. Dents in his armor proved to be a little more obvious with his recent battles proving to be more difficult. Thankfully, though, the circuitry implanted within his armor was still in perfect condition. How his armor is still up is beyond him. “Oh. My. God. Michael! How is it worn out already? Can I see your weapons as well?” She says, genuinely concerned about the worn out armor. It’s a good thing her work isn’t piled up with restoring his weapons as it was his responsibility to make sure they are in working order. He summons his pistol and rifle and she finds them to still be in working condition, something she is very glad about. “Well, your weapons are fine and all, but what happened to the armor? It’s going to take at least a few days to repair the dents!” She says as she takes a closer look at the chestplate, her fingers caressing the dents she found. “It’s a little outdated, don’t you think?” He says, “My magic’s spells are a convoluted mess that I don’t find some of them useful.”
“Outdated you say? I mean. I’d like to think it is. It’s been awhile, but I think I can reformat the entire magic back to its base systems.” She sighs, thinking of all the work she’ll have to do and the work the both of them will miss out on. “But, I guess it’s better to do it now than later. If we’re going to reformat the system, we might as well go all out and rewrite the system overall.” the blonde said, “And that includes replacing this armor. But don’t worry, I’ll salvage what I can.” “Not that I wanted you to. How long do I have to be under deep sleep?” He asks as he laid himself down on his bed. “I… have no idea. Normally you’ll be in deep sleep when the system patches your magic.” She responds, shrugging.
It took Giselle nearly 30 minutes to have her gear set up in his room, which includes machinery she needed to power her tools and a mobile fabricator necessary to create new armor. She wasn’t sure she even needed her fabricator and she’s glad to have it put to use for this occasion. She mostly needed her Magic System Computer to be able to write up spells and code his magic. Assembling the entire setup was easier said and done, and she needed to make sure all the parts were in the proper places, something she wanted to make sure of as there had been incidents in the past where unsecure pieces of equipment resulted in harming the soldier in question. After the assembly was done, she connected the wires from her equipment to the generator and she was now set to get to work.
Turning on her MSC, two hexagonal panels appear - one that is a screen of some sorts requesting her credentials, and the other consists of a set of buttons with different characters that matches what a keyboard is supposed to do. After typing in her credentials, several other panels appeared in front of her. One of them functions as a monitor that projects a 3d simulation of a spell she writes, the other being a bigger hexagon she uses to type in her code, and a smaller panel that reveals a picture of her in a bikini, just vibing by the beach. She looked photogenic. Other than those panels, several smaller but longer panels appear around Michael’s skin with holes which function as “ports” that serve to connect him to the MSC. “Alright, let’s get started. Are you ready?” Michael nods. Giselle connects the cables from the MSC to him through the ports. He doesn’t feel the pins piercing through his skin, but he does feel the base touch his skin. She proceeds to work as she pulls the keyboard panel close to her.
“So… what happened back there?” She asks, hoping to have some small talk to break the silence. “What do you mean?” “You were… behaving. Oddly. When you got back from the mission. Did something happen?” She asks. It was obvious enough that she was concerned, but she doesn’t want to push buttons that would make him uncomfortable, or worse, react negatively. “...nothing. I was just tired.” An obvious lie. She knew he was behaving differently when he got back to the hotel. She felt insulted as if Michael didn’t trust her with the goings on with his life. She picked up a tool from the night stand and zapped his skin, and he was taken aback at the sudden shock from her tool. “For someone’s who’s supposedly strong enough to take down the toughest foes, you sure can’t handle a small zap from a measly tool.” She mockly says to him. “Now spill.”
“Alright, alright.” He sighs, knowing that hiding it is futile. Actually, hiding anything from her is futile, though he won’t know this as he had lost most of his memories from the trauma. He didn’t want to talk about it, but he had no choice because otherwise, he’d get zapped instead. “I… the target was a heretic.” She pauses her work for a bit before continuing on her coding. “His face brought back a lot of memories.” He says, his voice trembling at the reminder of what the man did. “Do you know who he is?” “Gerolt.” He gulps, a tear streaming down his face. She knew who Gerolt was, and at that time, he was able to escape from Giselle’s wrath as well as the survivors. She pauses.
She pauses before speaking in a hushed tone. “It was my fault for letting him get away from my sight. I’m sorry.” She says. “It’s not your fault. It was mine. I wasn’t strong enough to fight them all.” “Don’t blame yourself, Michael. It’s not your fault that they were killed.”
Work resumes and Michael finds himself in a deep sleep.
[ Word Count - 1207 / 2000 ]
Last edited by Knight Owl on 1st September 2020, 6:56 am; edited 1 time in total