Recollections of the Past

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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 “It’s a little outdated, don’t you think?”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“Outdated you say?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.

He opens his eyes and finds himself in a wheat field, every stalk colored a golden yellow and glowing under the rays of the sun. The skies were a vivid orange, and white clouds could be seen on the horizon. The weather was fine. He inspects himself and found himself to be wearing a soft white shirt and black pants, both bearing an oriental design. His bare feet touches the soft soil the stalks of wheat grew upon.

Looking around, this field looked familiar. He looked around for any signs of the eastern village, but all he found was an undening field of wheat save for the same statue bound in chains and locks. These had the same oriental design as those from the town. The statue is very familiar as he had encountered the same statue just before he woke up a few nights prior, though this time the statue has worn out for some time. He noticed something new, however, as a disgustingly green arcane sigil appeared afloat just in front of the statue. The sigil looked menacing.

Wary of it and his experiences in the past, he cautiously approached the statue. He wasn’t given much choice as the statue was the only thing standing in this endless wheat field, not even forests or mountains could be seen on the horizon. As he neared the sigil, the statue’s eyes glowed red, and a resounding voice echoes around him “Tell me, soldier. Why did you join the order in the first place?” the voice said. It was deep with a slightly eastern accent and was somewhat demonic. “Why did you take up arms? For glory? For power?”

“I… don’t remember.” He replied, reluctantly. He was puzzled. Does the statue somehow know everything about him?

“Did you forget, or did you choose to forget?”

Michael was certain the statue knew who he was, but he doesn’t know what it is. He feels as if asking the wrong questions would back him into a corner, paranoia creeping in his mind just by seeing the statue. Dark clouds storms hither from the horizon, and the once vibrant atmosphere has suddenly become dull and dark. Rain pours from the heavens as the skies are filled with dark clouds. “Who are you?” He asks, now wet from the rain, “And how do you know me?”

“Peer through the looking glass and see the man that you were in times past.”

He turns around to see a mirror standing by the ground, supported by an oriental looking stand. Overall, it looked like something you would see from the east. As he leaned in close to the reflective surface of the glass, he found himself, or rather, a younger self who exhibited psionic powers that he was able to make objects float around him. He saw himself exhibiting other psychic abilities, and he saw himself volunteering to be a part of the Arch Vorbrundt order. It was until he saw himself take the first step on the facility that the mirror broke, and he was blown away as if some force pushed him off the glass.

Thunder and lightning booms from the heavens, and Michael grips his head in pain as memories come flooding back to him. It was painful, as he recalled all of the times he’s used his powers, and all the information he knew then. It is all happening too fast and he’s struggling to stop himself from remembering. “You are remembering. Good.” His eyes flashed a brilliant white light, and white energy started pouring through from his surroundings, all of them bearing a semblance of memory from his past, especially painful ones. As his energy reaches its peak, everything turns white, and then to black.

And he woke up, sweating from the dream he had. He remembered who he was in the past, and what he was capable of doing, though his other memories remain locked away. Inspecting his surroundings, he finds himself awake at the crack of dawn, with small lights from the machines illuminating his dark room. He turns to his left to see a transparent hexagonal panel from the MSC that reads ‘System Overwrite - 100%’. It seems that the update was finished. To his right, he saw Giselle browsing through her phone, and she saw him wake up. “You’re finally awake.” She says, and she was ecstatic to see him. “Ok, ok, so. First of all, I kinda forgot a small portion of the order has some kind of psychic ability that I failed to integrate it to your magic because, like, you were the most powerful psychic back then. If you didn’t know. Because amnesia and all.” Michael just nods and lets her finish talking, not thinking of telling her he is aware nor does he have any intentions of telling her about the dream.

“And, also, get this - I finally did it. I finally integrated the armor to your magic. Go ahead! Call it out!” She was obviously giddy to see him in his new armor. Though he just woke up, he relented and stood up. Mentally commanding his magic, he calls out to his armor, and he finds himself wearing a nanosuit. It definitely gave his muscles more definition, most especially his posterior. It looked like he was wearing a second set of skin. “Huh. Feels like wearing nothing at all.”

“And here’s the best part! Call out your Hound armor.” Once more, he mentally commanded his magic to summon his Hound armor. Hexagons appear all around him and pieces of the armor were pulled out of it, eventually connecting them to ports located all around his nanosuit. Lastly, found himself wearing his helmet, and with improved user interface. “Cool right?” “Yeah, I guess so. Thank you, Giselle.” He says as he commanded his armor to detach and disappear, his nanosuit unravelling and disintegrating into codes.

“Don’t mention it! Also,” She says, pausing as she pulls out her phone, swiping on it till she found what she was looking for, “I got us a job.”