-Chapter 10

The door slid open for Sam as she entered the ship's bridge.

"As you can see, Shido and Hermit are together again." Kotori pointed at the large display. "Supposedly, they're looking for Yoshinon. Hermit lost it when fighting the AST the other day, and she was out looking for it by herself when Shido stumbled upon her." On the display, Shido and Yoshino were doing their best shifting through the trash and rubble in order to find Yoshinon. They weren't allowed too close to the department store as a large construction fence had been erected around it, and no unauthorised personnel were allowed access, but they were thoroughly searching everywhere that they could go.

"I see. So that big hare was Yoshinon then?" Sam asked.

"Her angel?"

"Uh, I guess?"

"Yes, Zadkiel can be summoned using Yoshinon or without it's help, but she summoned it using Yoshinon the other day."

They both went back to watching the display for a little while, before Sam asked the question that she was dreading the answer to. "How is it?"

Kotori sighed. "It's in the workshop. Kannazuke!"

"Yes, Commander?" Kannazuke stood to attention.

"Go down there with her, will you?"

"At once!" Kannazuke descended the steps of Kotori's raised position and beckoned Sam to follow him.

They were walking down the vast halls of the Fraxinus when Sam pressed Kannazuke for some greater detail. "It's bad, isn't it?"

"Very." Was all he said. Sam dropped her head. "But, it's not all bad."

"What do you mean?" Sam asked, but not getting too hopeful.

"There's always that prototype." Kannazuke suggested.

"I wish." Sam snorted.

"Well, why not?"

She sighed. "Because it's experimental technology, that only exists in theory to most. It's never once been tested, and it could all-too-easily end up killing me." She lifted her head up and looked at him, who was looking at her whilst walking backwards. "I'd like to get it to work, but it's going to take more than just wishful thinking."

They stopped in front of the workshop's door. It looked like all the other doors on the ship, two polished plates that opened in the middle, with the top plate lifting up into the ceiling and the bottom plate descending down into the floor. Sam walked through but Kannazuke waited outside, he knew what was coming.

Sam dropped to her knees. There on the table in front of her, was her armour. It was cracked, broken, and in some places, completely missing. Wordlessly, she stood back up and shambled over to further inspect it, but her heart just sunk more and more. She picked up what was left of the breast plate. It's entire left side was missing and there was a web of cracks that ran horizontally along it. She picked up the retaining band of her visor, the glass completely gone. As she continued to inspect the pieces, she made a mental list of all the things that were broken beyond repair or missing entirely. "Left wing, Left spalder and railgun, left knee guard, right gauntlet..." She picked through the pieces until she found what she was really dreading.

The suit's main source of power: The realiser, capable of converting magical energy into energy the suit used, was completely fried and irreparable.

Sam threw it to the floor in anger. "Damn it! Damn it damn it damn it!" She collapsed into a nearby stool as Kannazuke walked in.

"Shouting like that isn't going to help anybody, and you know that."

Sam let out a long sigh. "This is years of my life, wasted." Kannazuke looked at her pitifully. "And do you know why? One artillery round. One! I thought I made this thing stronger than that, but I guess not."

"Well, it WAS point-blank." Kannazuke thought out loud.

"Not helping."

They both turned around to look at Kotori, who had just walked in through the door.

"Commander?" Kannazuke prompted Kotori to go on.

"Sam! Get off your butt right now!"

Sam groaned, but she complied.

"Good. Now, let's fix this. Sam?"

"Well, the realiser is completely shot, the wiring is either gone or barely functioning and the shield system is damaged, but I could fix that one at least."

Kotori looked at Sam expectantly.

"The overall integrity of the suit is OK. It definitely seems that the shield and upper left portion of the suit took the brunt of the damage, but my left wing is clipped."

"And how do we fix it?" She pressed.

Sam scratched her head. "I don't know... We could build a new realis-"

"No."

"No? Did you not just hear me? We've got no other choice, the suit is-"

Kotori pointed at the blue light in the corner, where it was suspended in water and surrounded by tinted glass in an attempt to reduce the staggering amount of light it gave off.

"The fusion core?" Sam nearly choked. When Kannazuke had brought it up just now, she merely shrugged the notion away, but for the Commander to completely, one hundred percent seriously suggest using it caused a different reaction.

"Yes. You've already been developing a suit capable, haven't you?"

Sam rubbed her eyes, suddenly tired. "Yes, but it's never been tested! To just drop it into a suit and start using it would come with an absurd level of risk! So many more calculations need to be made, so many more trials need to be done, so much more refining needs to happen!"

"Then do it!" Kotori slammed her hands down on the desk.

"I can't!" Sam kicked the stool in frustration. "Do you have any idea what a ridiculous notion that is? Yeah sure, the suit wouldn't be too hard to make, but adapting the core to fit and power the entire suit by it's own is absolutely-"

Sam gasped. "Oh my God." She rushed over to her designing table and grabbed a clean blueprint.

She started fumbling blindly for a pencil when Kotori interrupted her train of thought, "Sam?"

"Shh!" Sam spat. The image was so clear in her head that she felt as if she could just pluck it from her thoughts and place it onto the table, but she feared that by talking it would dissipate. Her hand finally clasped a pencil and she immediately took to the paper, drawing lines and circles and writing all sorts of calculations, equations and formulas as quickly as she could.

About 10 minutes later, Kannazuke and Kotori standing politely by the whole time, Sam leant back from her work and presented it to Kotori.

Kotori recoiled at the sight. "Sam, I'm happy for you, but I have no idea what any of this means."

Kannazuke butted in, but he couldn't make any sense of Sam's handiwork either. She mentally rolled her eyes. "Look here." Sam pointed at a drawing of the proposed chestpiece unit. It looked similar to the one she used to use, except there was a circle drawn directly in the centre, between her breasts. "This is where the fusion core and capacitor was going to go, providing power to the whole suit. In my original design, this was very large in order to produce enough energy to power the suit and all of it's systems. It made the suit dangerous for a load of reasons that I won't bother going into, because it's unimportant."

Sam pointed to another part of the blueprint: her right thigh. "In this design, I put one here, one in the other thigh, and one in the chestpiece." Sam turned around and grabbed another paper. "This is the original design for the core." Sam flipped the paper over. "And this is the new design."

Kotori and Kannazuke both stared blankly at the blueprints, and they couldn't really make anything out. However, Kannazuke did notice that the two designs looked almost identical, but one was a lot smaller. "The new design is much smaller than the old one, why is that?" He pointed out.

Sam spun the stool around and grabbed the first blueprint again. "I had to fix the issue of heat and instability, so I made the cores smaller. Each core now puts out about a third of the energy that one of the original cores put out, but individually, they generate a lot less heat."

She turned the paper around to look at the new design. "It's not going to be as efficient as my original design, and quite a bit heavier, but at least it'll work!" Sam started grinning like a schoolgirl who's just been told that they got what they wanted for their birthday.

"How long will it take?" Kotori asked.

Sam looked over at the pieces lying on the desk and then over at the fusion core in the corner. "Considering the suit's mostly built already." Sam scratched her chin. "And assuming I don't run into any problems when altering the fusion core, which I'll have to do mostly on my own..." Sam did some more mental calculations and estimates. "We could probably get the wings built within a few days..."

Sam looked up at Kotori. "A few weeks?"

Kotori's expression clearly outlined that she had thought it would take a lot less time. "A few weeks?"

"Maybe a month, absolutely tops." Sam proposed.

"And there's nothing else you can use?"

Sam thought for a moment. "There's always that."

At first, Kotori was confused what Sam meant, but then she remembered. "No."

"Well then a few weeks is the best we're getting, I'm afraid." Sam looked down at her hands and cracked her knuckles. "I better get to work, hadn't I?"

"Yes, I guess you better." Kotori looked away, lost in thought.

"Commander?" Kannazuke asked softly.

Kotori blinked once and her gaze returned to him. "Nothing, don't worry about it. Sam?" Sam perked up again. "Ratatoskr's going to give you all the help you need, OK?"

"Yeah Yeah, sure, whatever." Sam waved her away and got to work on some more designs, her pencil scribbling furiously as she developed and expanded her plans even further.

"Well, it looks like that's our queue to leave." Kannazuke said.

"Yeah, it looks like it." Kotori replied. "Come on, let's go see how Shido's doing." She started walking towards the door, followed by Kannazuke, but she stopped to say one more thing to Sam, "Good luck!" But Sam didn't appear to acknowledge her.