We've all heard the saying before: a picture is world a thousand words. Well, Noi drew the picture, and now I want to give her a thousand words.
Happy birthday, Noi. Here we go:
It was one of the most uncommon, irregular, unusual sights known to man. Jade Curtiss, Colonel of the Malkuth army, famed Necromancer, He-of-the-eternal-grin-and-poker-face…
Was gritting his teeth. Visibly.
Then again, perhaps that's not the best way to describe it. There was some manner of different expression on his face. His eyes were wider than usual, his mouth open and teeth bared, his visage contorted into a focused look of concentration. To be fair, though, it was quite understandable, considering that a massive crowd of people were bearing down on the Colonel, arms outstretched, lips puckering, hearts throbbing.
Jade Curtiss had become irresistible.
It started innocently enough. Jade, as usual, wanted to experiment with various theories in the hopes of advancing Malkuth science and the military. Having seen Luke's power manifesting into something more controllable as they traveled to Passage Rings, his thoughts were slowly wandering toward small-scale hyperresonance.
Never a full scale one, of course; he knew all too well what a full-out hyperresonance could do… But here was a seven-year old replica, only coming into his own now as a person and a swordsman… and he was mastering hyperresonance. Perhaps there was a chance that he could make use of it, artificially…
And that was why, one warm morning while the whole party was taking time off from adventuring to relax in Grand Chokmah, Jade was just placing the finishing touches on a particularly elaborate-looking piece of fontech. Having asked Luke to arrive at his mansion shortly after ten, he was not at all surprised when the replica wandered in late at half past.
"Good afternoon, Luke," the Colonel hummed, extracting two long cables from the machine. "I was expecting you to arrive this morning, but I suppose the allure of sleep on the young is undeniable."
Luke blinked a few times. It was obvious he was still drowsy. "I didn't sleep in that late!" he said quickly, then cut himself off before his next sentence as a large yawn slipped between his lips. "Did I?" he wondered.
Jade merely shrugged. "Peony was going to invite us to lunch, but I told him we'd have to reschedule because you were busy dreaming about Tear."
The replica flushed furiously, frowning. "I wasn't…! That… Was I talking about my dreams in my sleep?"
"Not at all," the Colonel answered melodically, "but at least now I know you really were dreaming about her."
Luke was silent for a moment, then softly mumbled, "Just tell me what you need help with, Jade."
"I'd like you to grab onto these," he replied, passing Luke the two cables connected to the machine. "And try to feed a very small amount of hyperresonance into the machine through them."
"My hyperresonance?" echoed Luke, his head tilting slightly. "Why do you want me to use that?"
Easily and calmly, Jade slipped into his story. "I'd like to see how well your fonon control has developed, and see how well you can keep a hyperresonance under your own power."
"This machine will measure that?" Luke blinked.
"More or less," he answered, flipping a lever. "Go ahead and try."
A golden light began to glow in Luke's hands, and the cable connecting him to the fontech shimmered yellow. A large sphere in the centre of the cube-like machine, visible only between cracks in a skeleton frame and surrounding fontech wires, began to spin, turning yellow and then increasing to gold. The hairs on Jade's neck started to raise. He had long since learned to listen to his instincts, and his were starting to tell him something was going wrong.
"Luke," he snapped quickly, "stop!"
But Luke didn't stop; it was as though the fon machine was starting to draw on him, more and more, pulling hyperresonance from his body and making it harder for him to stop it. Luke was too frightened that letting go of the cable might allow a hyperresonance to slip off in a random direction, and so he held on, sustained the reaction.
Quite suddenly, the machine stopped pulling power and Luke cut himself off by dropping the cables; it was as though the sphere were full within its metallic cage. With a brilliant flash, the light began to expand. Steady streams were pouring out of the fon machine's cracks. Jade got a bad feeling about the light, then felt an even worse one: his fonons were being pulled into the sphere.
"Jade!" Luke screamed as he felt the fonic pull. His body shined bright with light for a moment, and then he collapsed, unconscious, on the ground.
Jade could already feel his body becoming lighter, but used his expertise in fonon management to erect a hasty barrier around himself. It wasn't a strong barrier, like the kind Natalia used to protect her allies, but it was enough to hold him together. If only he had been fast enough to protect Luke…
Tiny bolts of light were now collecting into the sphere, which was rising free of the fon machine and hovering as a self-contained ball of fonons above Jade's invention. Moments later, all was quiet. There were no more bolts, and the ball of fonons was spinning silently. Jade let down the barrier, feeling (quite correctly) that he was no longer being pulled on.
It happened in an instant. The ball of fonons shattered with the sound of breaking glass, bolts of fonons scattering in all directions, traveling through the walls and ceiling to get outside. Jade, after checking to make sure Luke would be all right, raced up the stairs, intent on following them. While the hyperresonance experiment had bombed disastrously, perhaps there was still something to be learned.
Jade got upstairs and, at a brisk walk, opened the door of his mansion, stepping outside into the light. There was a whole crowd of people outside. Everyone who they had met on their travels, from the God-Generals, to Frings and Cecille, to his sister, were there.
Their eyes were closed, but they were all standing and breathing. They were, by all appearances, alive, just not moving… Something very strange was going on here…
And that's a thousand words! Thanks for reading, and…
What? You want a conclusion?
…Very fussy people you are. All right, Noi, I suppose you're worth it.
Carry on…